Job 27:10

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"Will he always call upon God?" Job 27:10

It would seem as if the emphasis should be laid upon the word "always." There is mutable worship enough. Occasional prayers are known to those who are not Christians, even in name. Probably, all men in Christian countries are conscious of occasional high impulses and noble aspirations; they enter with sympathy and enthusiasm into religious psalmody or other forms of religious worship: but they do so in a merely sentimental manner; they express an impulse, not a conviction; they enjoy a luxury, rather than reveal a hunger of the heart which God alone can satisfy. Our worship is to be proved by its continuity. We are not to serve God, so to say, in fits and starts, now very ardent, and now very cold; now engaging ourselves with all industry as if everything depended upon us, and now allowing the work to fall into desuetude and contempt. Will he always call upon God, in health, in sickness, in wealth, in poverty, in the bright summer day, in the cold winter night, on the land where all things seem to be solid, on the water where everything is restless and in peril? Will he always serve God, in the ardour of youth, in the sobriety of manhood, in the repose of old age? We must not boast ourselves of our religion until it has been tried in every possible combination of circumstances, for the one in which it has not been tried may prove that we never knew the inmost secret of God: "He that endureth to the end shall be saved." We are to watch and be sober, to persevere unto the end, to drive away slumber from the eyelids, lest whilst we sleep the Bridegroom should come. There is little or no fear of our forgetting prayer in the day of trouble, of loneliness, or of bitter grief; sorrow always makes us mindful of our religious obligations and opportunities, the fear is that we may wax fat and kick, that in our prosperity we may forget God, that at high noon we may imagine we ourselves kindled the sun: "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." To see a man praying when he seems to have no need of prayer is to see what approaches almost the dignity of a miracle. It may be easy to cry unto God when we have lack of food, but to invoke his benediction upon a plentiful table, and to do it with a humble heart, may be a test of the reality of our religion. Sweet is the word, Always pray always, every day of the week, every hour of the wakeful night; not praying as a duty, or accepting it as a discipline, but enjoying it as a supreme delight, and valuing it as the widest and noblest liberty. "Pray without ceasing."