Transforming Power of Prayer

If we with earnest effort could succeed

To make our life one long connected prayer, As lives of some perhaps have been and are;

If, never leaving thee, we had no need

Our wandering spirits back again to lead Into thy presence, but continue there, Like angels standing on the highest stair

Of the sapphire throne — this were to pray, indeed.

But if distractions manifold prevail, And if in this we must confess we fail,

Grant us to keep at least a prompt desire, Continual readiness for prayer and praise,

An altar heaped and waiting to take fire With the least spark, and leap into a blaze.

Trench.

Ir is a very interesting fact that it was as Jesus was praying that he was transfigured. When he first knelt on the cold mountain, there was no brightness on his face. But, as he continued in prayer, there began to be, at length, a strange glow on his features. Brighter and brighter it grew, until his face shone as the sun. Heaven

149 came down to earth, and glory crowned the transfiguration mount.

What was true for him in his human life is true also for his people. Prayer transfigures. There may be no such bodily transfiguration as there was in the case of Jesus. Yet we have all seen human faces which had a strange light in them, caused by the peace and joy within. The heart makes the face. The spirit writes the lines of its features on the countenance. An unhappy heart soon makes an unhappy face. Discontent cannot long be hidden; it soon shows itself on the surface, working up from the soul’s depths. Bad temper reveals itself, not only in unseemly outbreaks, but in the whole expression. Lust in the heart before long stains and blotches the features.

On the other hand, good and beautiful things within reveal themselves in the face. We have all seen sick people, who, in sorest pain, yet endured with a patience which made their features glow. We have seen persons enduring sorrow, whose peace seemed to shine through their tears as if a holy lamp were burning within. We have seen old people who had learned life’s lessons so well that their faces, though wrinkled with age, appeared transfigured in sweet, quiet beauty.

Then who has not seen faces, even in the coffin, on which in very death there appeared to sit a restful calm, as if the spirit, in departing, had thrown back the reflection of its own blessedness? Some one writes:

How oft we see upon some still, dead face

A strange, new grace: A beauty that in life we could not trace j

As if, quick pausing in its glad release,

Its spirit touched with peace The clay o’er which its power now shall cease j

And we who thought to look upon our dead

With shrinking dread, By that sweet, rapturous calm are comforted.

Even the body is, indeed, ofttimes changed, transfigured, by the grace that dwells within. Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. We are assured, too, that in the resurrection, Christ shall change our mortal bodies into the likeness of his own glorified body. Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory on the transfiguration mount, were saints in their common, every-day heavenly dress.

But whatever we may say about the body, the character of the believer is transfigured. A Christian life is a new incarnation. If Christ dwell in you he will produce in you the same

151 kind of life which he himself lived when he was on the earth. This change does not come in its completeness instantaneously the moment one believes on Christ. It begins then. But life is large. Life’s lessons are many and hard to learn. Paul was an old man when he said, “I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therein to be content.” It had taken him many years to learn this lesson of contentment. It takes any of us years to get life’s lessons learned. But nothing is clearer than that life’s mission here is to be transformed into the likeness of Christ. There is to be a transfiguration of character. Holiness must become the every-day dress of the Christian. We are called to be saints, even in this world.

There is yet another way in which Christian life is transfigured by faith in Christ. The very garments of Jesus were changed, sharing in his transfiguration. This suggests that for the Christian all life’s conditions and circumstances — the garments of life — are transfigured.

Take the matter of care. Every life has cares. There are cares in business. There are cares in home-life. There are cares of poverty, but no less has the rich man his cares. Childhood has its anxieties; young faces sometimes appear careworn. No one can escape

152 care. To many people life is very hard. But Christian faith transfigures care for those who are Christ’s and have learned how to live as he teaches us to live. He tells us to be anxious for nothing, because our Father is caring for us. He tells us that life is a school and that all our cares are parts of lessons set for us. That means that every care has hidden in it a secret of blessing — a gift of love our Father has sent to us. Every time you come to a hard point in your life, — an obstacle, a difficulty, a perplexity, — God is giving you a new chance to grow stronger, wiser, or richer-hearted. We try to make life easy for our children, but God is wiser than we are. He wants his children to have struggles, that they may grow brave and noble. Mrs. Sangster writes:

Our way had been to smooth her upward road, Easing the pressure of each heavy load; Never to let her white hand know a soil, Never her back to feel the ache of toil. Could we have shielded her from every care, Kept her forever young and blithe and fair, And from her body warded every pain, And from her spirit all distress and strain, This had been joy of joys, our chosen way. God led her by a different path, each day; Sorrow and work and anxious care he gave, — And strife and anguish, — till her soul grew brave.

J53

Thus it is that common care is transfigured by the grace of Christ. It enfolds blessings for us. It carries in its dreary form secrets of good for us. Our drudgeries have benedictions in their wearisome routine; we get many of our best lessons out of them. All we need to learn is how to meet our worries, and they are transfigured for us. The light of Christ shines through them.

St. Paul tells us in a wonderful passage how to get this transformation of care, — to be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer to make our requests, our worries, known to God. Then the peace of God shall guard our hearts and our thoughts. That is transfiguration — God’s peace shining through all life’s frets. Sleeping on our pillow of stone, with the cold night’s chill about us, we have visions of God and glory. Thus care is transfigured by the love of Christ in the heart.

Take sorrow. Every one has sorrow. Being a Christian does not exempt any one from grief. But here, again, faith in Christ brings transfiguration. Not only are we taught to endure patiently and submissively the sorrows that come to us, but we are assured that there is a blessing in them for us, if we accept them with love and trust. One of the deepest truths taught in the Bible is that earthly sorrow has a mission in the sanctifying of life. One of the most sacred words of all Scripture is that which tells us that Jesus Christ was made perfect through sufferings. This teaches that in the culture of even his sinless character there was something which only suffering could do, which he could get in no other school. His life was not perfect in its development until he had suffered.

We dread pain, and yet the soul that has not experienced pain has not yet touched the deepest and most precious meanings of life. There are things we never can learn, save in the school of pain. There are reaches of life we never can attain, save in the bitterness of sorrow. There are joys we never can have until we come into the dark ways of trial. A French writer says, “Perhaps to suffer is nothing else than to live deeply. Love and sorrow are the two conditions of a profound life.” These are true words. Without loving, one can never know anything of life worth knowing; and without suffering, one can never get below the surface in human experience. Not to have sorrow, in some form, is to miss one of life’s holiest opportunities. We get our best things out of trial. Those who wear the white robes in heaven are the saints who have come out of great tribulation.

Thus it is that Christian teaching pours the light of Christ upon sorrow. Faith sees sorrow no longer dark and portentous, but struck through with the radiance of heaven, transfigured by the blessedness of Christ.

Duty, also, is transfigured by faith in Christ. Duty is not easy. It covers every moment. Ofttimes it is hard, almost more than we can endure. Men find work oppressive in their places of business and toil. Women bend under their burden of household work, which is never done. Much of all this duty is not only hard, but it is also dreary, — the same things over and over, in endless routine. Ofttimes, too, nothing seems to come out of it at all. It is like dipping up water in a bucket with holes; nothing is gained. The hands are empty at the close, after a whole lifetime of toil. Many people grow discouraged when they think of the hard, grinding routine to which they must put their hands anew every morning. The reward for doing their work well is only more work, and harder.

But here, again, Christian faith transforms all. There is a blessing in duty, no matter how dull and wearisome it is. There is a blessing in the mere doing of it, though nothing seem to come of it. God loves faithfulness, and always re-

156 wards it. One may work hard for seventy years, and have nothing laid up in banks or in real estate; but if he has wrought truly he has indeed much treasure laid up. Work itself is a blessing, one of the best means of grace. It lays up strength in the body. It trains and develops the powers. It makes a man a man — self-reliant, capable, conscious of power. We talk of the drudgery of our common task-work; it is in this very drudgery that we get our best education. We form good habits, and thus build up life and character.

Then think of a man supporting a home, bringing up a family, providing for his wife and children through all his years, and sending out his sons and daughters to take an honorable place in the world. Suppose that he is as poor at the end of his life as he was at the beginning; if he has done all this, can he say that his commonplace duty all the years has left no blessing? He has not piled money into walls and stocks and goods, but he has built blessing into immortal lives. He has gathered a wealth of noble character into his own soul. He has laid up treasures in heaven by his faithfulness.

These are hints of the way faith in Christ transfigures duty. There is a blessing in every fragment of it when love fills it. An artist’s

157 picture shows a number of angels in a kitchen, doing the work of a weary house-wife. One is putting the kettle on the fire. One is lifting a pail of water. One is getting down the dishes from the cupboard. Another is sweeping the floor. There really is no fiction in this bit of art- work. It is beautiful as angels’ work, the household duty of the mothers and daughters in the home. Then we know that there was One, higher than all angels, who actually wrought for years in a peasant carpenter-shop. That is not an artist’s fancy, — that is human story. Let not the men who work now in business and at trades, toiling ofttimes even to painful weariness, ever say that work is not holy. All duty is sacred, transfigured, if it be done with love for Christ in the heart.

Thus, turn where we may, we find the bright shining of the glory of the Redeemer in these lives of ours. Our very bodies are made glorious by being the temples of the Holy Spirit. Our characters are renewed and transformed into the beauty of the Lord by the faith that lives within us. Then all life is transfigured, — care, sorrow, duty.

The analogy holds also in the other fact that it is in prayer, communion with God, that this transforming takes place. All true prayer has a

158 transfiguring influence. It brings us into the immediate presence of God. The holy of holies in the ancient temple, where the Shekinah was, was no holier than where you bow every time you pray. You are looking up into the face of Christ himself. John was not nearer to him, lying upon his breast, than you are in your praying. One cannot thus look up into the face of Christ and not have some measure of transfiguration wrought in him.

Then prayer is the reaching up of the soul toward God. It lifts the life for the time into the highest, holiest frame. A prayerful spirit is full of aspirations for God. Its longings are pressing up Godward. No mood of spiritual life is more blessed than longing. It is God in the soul kindling its desires and yearnings for righteousness and holiness. It is the transfiguring of the spirit which purifies these dull, earthly lives of ours, and changes them, little by little, into the divine image.

All true prayer is characterized by submission to God’s will. We come to God’s feet full of our own ways and wishes. But it may be that our ways are not God’s ways. Perhaps we are willful, insubmissive, rebellious. We desire things that are not best for us, and we are not willing to sink our will in God’s. But while

159 this is our spirit, we cannot even begin to pray. We must be brought to say, “Not my will, but thine be done.” Thus praying compels us into surrender and submission. It trains us to leave all our requests at God’s feet in confidence. The highest possible Christian consecration is found in the perfect yielding of the human will to the divine. That itself is a transfiguration. Prayer that compels us to submit our way to God’s transforms us into God’s image.

Then prayer transfigures us, because it brings down divine grace and good into our life. Prayers are answered. The things we pray for we get, if they are things that would truly bless our life. We are weak and pray for strength; we rise from our knees with the power of Christ resting upon us. We pray for holiness, and into our heart comes a new gift of life, and we feel in us impulses toward better things. We are in temptation, with fierce struggles, and calling for help; we receive blessing from the ministry of angels, who are sent to strengthen us. We are in sorrow, and, praying, we get comfort from God. Thus it is that wherever we pray, heaven is open above us, and divine blessings are sent down upon us. The touch of God is upon our soul in some way. Some new brightness begins to shine in our life.

1 60 “Lord, what a change within us one short hour Spent in thy presence will avVil to make S What heavy burdens from our bosoms take! What parched fields refresh as with a shower! We kneel, and all around us seems to lower; We rise, and all, the distant and the near, Stands forth in sunny outline, brave and clear. We kneel, how weak! we rise, how full of power!”

Thus prayer transforms our weakness into strength. It changes our defeats into victories. It brings us peace in turmoil. It changes fretting care into quiet trust. It sets rainbows on our storm clouds. It makes our tears of sorrow lenses, through which we see deeper into heaven. It opens the treasures of God’s love and enriches us with the best things of grace. Praying, we are transfigured.