Today I was reading a selection from John Baillie to start my day. He was born in Scotland in the 1880s and served as the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1943. Educated in his homeland of Scotland, he was a seminary professor in Edinburgh, Toronto, Chicago, and Auburn, Alabama.
His “Morning Prayers” contain beautiful language that invites us to come closer to God as we start our day not just in reverence but in honest reflection of ourselves. When you read them, you are encouraged to “Read each one slowly, praying it and making it your own."
“My First Thought”
"Eternal Father of my soul, let my first thought today be of you, let my first impulse be to worship you, let my first speech be Your name, let my first action be to kneel before You in prayer.
For Your perfect wisdom and perfect goodness:
For the love with with You loved mankind:
For the love with which You love me:
For the great and mysterious opportunity of my life:
For the indwelling of Your Spirit in my heart:
For the sevenfold gifts of Your Spirit:
I praise and worship You, O Lord.
Yet let me not, when this morning prayer is said, think my worship ended and spend my day in forgetfulness of You. Rather from these moments of quietness let light go forth, and joy, and power, that will remain with me through all the hours of the day. . . "
Those prayerful words are beautiful, but I am specifically held in the last paragraph from above. More than that generally, I am struck with the idea that when my morning prayers (or devotions) are done, let me not think that my worship of God is over for the day. So much of our lives, even with the coronavirus, is performed at a torrid pace and we cannot escape that fact culturally.
We confess this openly in worship, or secretly in our hearts. But does that fact make its way down into our very being; down to the place where we honestly confess that not enough of our day is spent in prayer and reflection on God? This prayer is not meant to rid us of attachment or make us resentful for the work of our days, but instead to realize, and then apply, the fact that God is with us at each moment. And so, if God is with us, there is always the chance to worship God in those very same moments—even if what we do at work does not feel like an extension of our Christian walks. It can be. And I think, Baillie believes this is possible.
I hope today that you will read John Baillie’s prayer a couple times today. . . Slowly. . . let it seep down into your heart and continue to worship God throughout the day.
Blessings
Rev. Derek
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