Read: 1 Kings 10:1-10

An abundance of spices . . . that the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon. (v. 10)

Was this “land of spices” a legendary country, remote and mysterious? No, not exactly. Remote, certainly, even more so than the Queen of Sheba’s homeland; but a real place. For hundreds of years after Bible times, the spices that made food worth eating—cloves and nutmeg, mace and pepper—came chiefly (like the bird of paradise!) from today’s Indonesia, by a long and expensive route, most of it overland, with dues to be paid each time the merchants passed from one country to another. But by George Herbert’s time, a century of exploration by sea had enabled the countries of Europe to cut out the middleman and bring these good things directly from “the land of spices.”

When we pray, we are well aware that there is just one unavoidable middleman, the Lord Jesus. But he is not the kind that requires payment of duty at the customs posts on goods being traded internationally. Rather, he is himself the bringer of the goods. All dues paid, all costs covered.

Robert Leighton, a younger contemporary of Herbert’s and a leading light in the Church of Scotland, wrote of prayer as “our very traffic with heaven,” which “fetches the most precious commodities thence. He who sends oftenest out these ships of desire . . . to that land of spices . . . shall . . . have most of heaven upon earth.”

Here is the poem in its entirety:

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Read: Isaiah 33:17-20

The king in his beauty . . . a land of far distances. (v. 17)

“Church-bells beyond the stars heard”: here is a remarkable phrase. This is picture language, of course, but perhaps the strangest of all these metaphors for prayer. And here is light on it from another English poet, this time only one century ago! A. E. Housman wrote “Bredon Hill,” a notable viewpoint in the west of England: “In summertime on Bredon / The bells they sound so clear; / Round both the shires they ring them, / In steeples far and near.” We hear much less bell ringing in my country nowadays. But for Herbert in the 17th century, as for Housman in the early 20th, it was “a happy noise to hear.” Familiar, regular, a universal call to focus afresh on God and his gospel: “Good people, come and pray,” sang the bells.

But notice the background to today’s title. In the previous line of his sonnet the older poet has been stargazing, looking out at the vastness of the universe, to somewhere even beyond the Milky Way, where God the Creator-King sits enthroned. Truly his creation is “a land of far distances” (v. 17). Yet as Herbert’s mind struggles to take in this immensity, what happens? “Beyond the stars” he hears “church bells.” Good people, come and pray, sing the chiming steeples around Bredon. These gatherings of humble village folk, “summoned by bells,” are likely to be encounters with God even more real, and of greater significance, than what an astronomer might find at the far end of the universe.

Here is the poem in its entirety:

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Read: Genesis 15:1-6

Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able . . . So shall your offspring be. (v. 5)

The Milky Way, as such, doesn’t figure anywhere in the Bible. But perhaps it was that band of brightness across the night sky, where the stars seem most densely packed, that illustrated the mind-blowing fact that God brought home to Abraham in Genesis 15—innumerable descendants promised to a childless man. Why does Herbert link it with prayer, though?

There is a clue in another of his poems, “The Holy Scriptures (II),” not itself about prayer but about Bible reading. Here too he has a starry sky in mind: “Oh that I knew how all thy lights combine, / And the configurations of their glory! / Seeing not only how each verse doth shine, / But all the constellations of the story.” The apparent patterns the stars make should remind God’s people of the actual patterns he intends their lives to follow.

Concerning the night sky as a whole, not just the Milky Way, it is these constellations, as well as the immense number of the stars, that stargazers have always noted. In a similar way, to Abraham they represented a multitude of people who were not just numberless but also all related.

Consider this truth when you pray. All the people, all the things, that we talk to God about, and all the connections between them, are mapped out in his mind. He knows what he’s doing.

Here is the poem in its entirety:

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Read: Ephesians 4:17-24

Taught . . . to put on the new self. (vv. 21, 24)

The meaning of yesterday’s quotation, “heaven in ordinary” may not have been obvious to us, but we need have no doubts about today’s phrase “man well drest,” or “man well dressed”—what it means, what it has to do with prayer, and why it is here bracketed with that previous phrase.

“Putting on Christ” is regular New Testament language for what you actually did in becoming a Christian. So once you belong to Jesus, it’s not something you have to do again, let alone do repeatedly; it’s something you have already done. You could rightly say that the whole character of your wardrobe is now different from what it was before. So far as your witness to the world around is concerned, what you are “wearing” these days will be what you might call a uniform, showing other people what you are. But so far as your prayer life is concerned (that being the focus of these readings), what you are “wearing” these days will always be your best clothes, recognizing what a privilege it is to be meeting God and talking with him.

About that meeting, yesterday’s phrase (“heaven in ordinary”) was about how God comes to me; today’s phrase (“man well drest”) is about how I come to him. They are two ways of describing what is happening when I pray. The first consideration moved me to humble worship, this second one gives me happy confidence.

Here is the poem in its entirety:

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Read: Luke 1:39-45

Why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? (v. 43)

“In ordinary” is in any case an unusual turn of phrase; but “heaven in ordinary” is even more puzzling. What does it mean, and what does it have to do with prayer?

Of course praying people repeatedly find “heavenly” truths becoming real in “ordinary” life. That is a wonderful experience, and a great privilege. But the words “in ordinary” represent something more than that. In fact a dictionary may give us half a dozen different meanings for “ordinary.” I think it is very possible that the meaning in Herbert’s mind, writing as he was in 17th-century England, was one in regular use in those times; a more specific, and more commonplace, reference. An “ordinary” in Herbert’s day was a tavern or other place that served meals. Here you are, having a routine lunch with a friend or two in your local diner, and the Queen of England stops by, and asks, “May I join you?” Heaven in ordinary.

The experience shared by the two remarkable women in our reading—relatives, one old, one young—was a miraculous pregnancy. They were both overwhelmed with the privilege of that most intimate awareness of God himself at work in their lives. Heaven had broken in! Their particular experience was of course unique; but something like that is the privilege of every praying believer.

Here is the poem in its entirety:

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Read: Exodus 16:1-4, 13-18

A day’s portion every day. (v. 4)

Alongside yesterday’s theme, the “bliss” of knowing that there is not a single thing we cannot bring to God in prayer, the reference to “manna” in the next line of the poem gives us the confidence that there will not be a single day when he will fail to meet our needs. Throughout the forty years of Israel’s travels in Sinai the nation was physically nourished by that remarkable “bread from heaven.” This too is a lesson in praying, as morning by morning we can say to our heavenly Father, “Here is yet another day in which you will be working out your plans for me, and I know that in the process you will be supplying all I need.”

And why is prayer here described as “exalted” manna? Surely this has to do with the relationship between the Old Testament and the New. So much of what God taught his people in that earlier time was a preview of much greater things yet to come, a series of models or patterns of the realities that were to be unveiled in the Christian era. Manna, that curious edible substance settling like frost during the night all around the encampments of the travelling Israelites, could feed people’s bodies. But the corresponding gift from God to us is his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, the true Bread from heaven that nourishes hearts and minds as well as bodies. Our prayer must be the response of his hearers in John 6:34: “Lord, give us this bread always.”

Here is the poem in its entirety:

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Read: Psalm 84:1-12

How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! (v. 1)

The last word in this line of the poem is “bliss.” We may use that phrase “last word” in another sense, and say that praying (the theme of all these readings) is, or at any rate can be, the last word in happiness, delight, even pleasure. Not, perhaps, something that often occurs to us. But I see how it can be so, and why Satan, the great spoilsport, would like to make us think otherwise.

It means talking to our loving Father about simply anything, knowing that he wants us to do so and is delighted to listen to us; that he is totally aware of our present circumstances, and is even more concerned about them than we are ourselves; that he has wonderful experiences lined up for us; that he is well aware we may find that hard to believe; that he wants us to “spill the beans,” to tell him how anxious, or puzzled, or angry, or desperate, or numb, or rebellious, we feel.

Oh, the bliss of being able to unload everything to a truly sympathetic ear! And then to have the assurance, whether or not we hear him say so, that he has everything under control! All of us may see ourselves as being (like the psalmist) from one point of view on our way to Zion, and from another, already there. In either case our Lord wants us to enjoy the bliss of his constant company.

Here is the poem in its entirety:

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Read: John 16:16-24

Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. (v. 24)

The connection between prayer and “softness” may have been rather puzzling, but the link here, between prayer and joy, is made crystal clear. There is puzzlement, for sure, in the minds of Jesus’ friends, because up to this point the idea that he might leave them, if only (as it will turn out) for the three days between his death and his resurrection, has been totally mystifying. But knowing a crucified and risen Christ will open up for them a whole new way of praying.

Joe, whom you met yesterday, has been a “disciple” for some time, but the person and name of Jesus are not yet a reality to him. Sooner or later, in God’s good time, Jesus will confront him with the words that lead into today’s text: “Until now you have asked nothing in my name.” To spell it out, Jesus will be saying something like this: “Be sure of it, Joe, when you ask me to be your Savior from sin and the Lord of your life, you’ll find you are able to talk in a new way to ‘him up there,’ who has already helped you from time to time in the past, and he will begin to answer you as never before. Just tell him ‘Jesus said I could come,’ and you’ll be welcome at once. Ask, and you will receive; that missing element, joy, will begin to color your life in ways you never dreamed of.”

Here is the poem in its entirety:

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Read: Philippians 4:4-7

In everything . . . prayer . . . and the peace of God. (vv. 6-7)

After the curious link between prayer and “softness” comes a metaphor that is much less puzzling, but will even so repay our close attention: that is, prayer as peace.

We need to focus on the word “everything” in verse 6 of our reading. My friend Joe has complicated problems, and when he and I are focusing on a particular one, the others have to wait their turn. Do they at that point begin to spin out of control?

Of course not. Life may be a jigsaw puzzle with a multitude of pieces, but God knows exactly where every bit of the puzzle is, and how each is designed to fit in with the rest; in what order, and at what speed, and with what purpose, all are eventually to be pieced together. He already has the whole picture in mind, involving many other people besides Joe and me. Because “The Lord is King,” says Josiah Conder’s hymn, “alike pervaded by his eye / All parts of his dominion lie.” When we are told to combine “supplication with thanksgiving” in our prayers, those two terms mean more than simply looking ahead to ask and looking back to thank; the thanking as well as the asking has in view what God is doing in the present and will be doing in the future, because we can with a peaceful heart know that every last detail will turn out to be part of the pattern.

Here is the poem in its entirety:

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Read: Psalm 65:1-13

You water its furrows . . . softening it with showers. (v. 10)

Halfway through our poem we come to five one-word definitions of prayer. The first is perhaps the oddest: “softness” can have such a negative ring to it—think of phrases like soft in the head, a soft defense, soft in the middle—and the “soft clothing” that characterizes the kind of people among whom (Jesus suggests) his coarsely clad preacher cousin John is unlikely to be welcomed (Luke 7:25). Is softness really to be one of our main objects in praying?

But then consider the opposite: not things that are already soft, but hard things that need “softening.” Here prayer comes into its own. It can deal with hard hearts. It can unravel hard problems. It can break up hard ground. It can answer hard questions. It can put a smile on hard faces. It can nerve the Lord’s people to face hard, indeed impossible, challenges.

We find this “softness” metaphor in the last part of Psalm 65. It belongs to the way the Lord manages the agricultural year for the benefit of those who farm his land. In the middle part of the psalm we have already been shown the worldwide scope of his operations, a vast management scheme of which Israel is only the local expression. And amazingly, the One who carries out all this “softening” is (as the opening verses have already told us) the God who has placed the center of his worldwide operations right here among us, in Zion.

Here is the poem in its entirety:

Continue reading Words of Hope – Daily Devotional – Softness →

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.

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