Read: John 12:12-23

Sir, we wish to see Jesus. (v. 21)

When I first looked at this next phrase, a verse in Proverbs (18:10) came into my mind: “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous man runs into it and is safe.” But the picture language in this part of the poem is generally about being on the offensive rather than on the defensive; so what George Herbert has in mind is not, I think, a place of refuge. If this line in the poem is about a city under siege, then along with other siegeworks we may picture trundling across no-man’s-land the kind of wooden tower on wheels upon which a whole company of armed men might climb, while it moves in sufficiently close to the city walls for them to be able then to leap across on to the battlements.

In this case we have here not so much an eager individual as a band of eager people, united in their purpose of storming the citadel and coming face to face with its Lord. Whether they are newcomers to the gospel or sinners who have already been saved, inside the city of God is where they want to be. The Lord is obviously present in a company that is thus unitedly wanting to get to him. Such a group will not be surprised to find its prayers receiving remarkable answers; and these praying people will be the first to recognize that such answers are brought about by his sovereign will rather than by their efforts.

The Prayer is printed below in its entirety.

Prayer (I)

BY GEORGE HERBERT

Prayer the Church’s banquet, Angels’ age,

God’s breath in man returning to his birth,

The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,

The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth;

 

Engine against th’ Almighty, sinner’s tower,

Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,

The six-days-world transposing in an hour,

A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;

 

Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,

Exalted Manna, gladness of the best,

Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,

The milky way, the bird of Paradise,

 

Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood.

The land of spices; something understood.

 

Prayer:

Sinners and saints, I want to be among that number, Lord.

 

https://woh.org/10.