No time to pray...

Sometimes I find myself wishing that I lived in another era. I am certain that "back in the day" it was so much easier to pray. There were so fewer distractions from God. Right now, my family is downstairs watching and cheering the Detroit Tigers in the World Series.

Back in the day, I bet families were gathered around the radio listening to ballgames. They werent in different rooms of the house, with various electronic gadgets. For that matter, farther back in the day.... I bet they were gathered around a piano and violin, singing hymns. Its probably not wrong to also imagine that those families prayed and read Gods word daily.

Regularly, I beat myself up with such thoughts. Today, while researching some great stuff on the computer... I came across some serious wisdom from Horatius Bonar, 1808-1889 Good meat to chew on.

(Lesson learned: Making time to pray is a self discipline and should be done regardless of circumstances, lack of time, environment, or era in which I live.)

Time for Everything but Prayer

Why is there so little anxiety to get time to pray? Why is there so little forethought in the laying out of time and employments so as to secure a large portion of each day for prayer? Why is there so much speaking, yet so little prayer? Why is there so much running to and fro, yet so little prayer? Why so much bustle and business, yet so little prayer? Why so many meetings with our fellow-men, yet so few meetings with God? Why so little being alone, so little thirsting of the soul for the calm, sweet hours of unbroken solitude, when God and His child hold fellowship together as if they could never part? It is the want of these solitary hours that not only injures our own growth in grace but makes us such unprofitable members of the church of Christ, and that renders our lives useless. In order to grow in grace, we must be much alone. It is not in society -- even Christian society -- that the soul grows most rapidly and vigorously. In one single quiet hour of prayer it will often make more progress than in days of company with others. It is in the desert that the dew falls freshest and the air is purest. So with the soul. It is when none but God is nigh; when His presence alone, like the desert air in which there is mingled no noxious breath of man, surrounds and pervades the soul; it is then that the eye gets the clearest, simplest view of eternal certainties; it is then that the soul gathers in wondrous refreshment and power and energy.