WHEN YOU DON'T FEEL LIKE IT

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 154, 17 July 1937, Page 12

WHEN YOU DON'T FEEL LIKE IT

If-you find it difficult to Pray, read this .slowly before you begin. Mahyipeople find it hard to form the habit of prayer beoause when they feel like praying there :is little opportunity for doing so, and when they have the opportunity they do not feel like praying. Yet that is the very condition that the habit of prayer is able to meet. Daily life- demands of me that I must write. At the tixnes when I feel inspired to write I am usually about to make a journey, keep an appointment, iiglit a fire, or. do some ordmary thing, and 1 find inyself in circumstances in which. I know I shall not have an opportunity for writing for several days. When tho other demands on my tiine are less pressing and I ean sit down with pen in hand inspiration has taken her fiight. But stern necessity will brook no delay. There is a 30b to be done and I must do it now, so I begin, without that feeling of elation and ur•gency which would have made the task easy earlier, to set down what was in my heart to say. Memory and, reason, knowledge aud necessity are now my only aids, And when I have ,said sineerely what 1 believe to be the truth of the matter in hand some quite dismterested person assures me that my Work has not suffered in the least for that lack of warmth for whicli I longed. If I were asked to broadcast I have a feeling that from the moment 1 entered the exnpty room where the microphone was waiting I should fear tliere was neitlier power to send the messag© out, nor listeners to heiar my words. But I am also certain that 1 should carry on with what I had to say, despite the disturbing vision of myself talking to myself in an empty room, And when I got outside and met some people who could assure me that they had heard my words and knew what I had said I should be glad I car--' lied on, despite that paralysing fear and utter lack of feeling. Yet when 1 come to pray I want to feel God neatr, and if I fail to do s'o L wonder is it all a hoas, a ludicrous let- down, kneeling alone and talking to empty air. So I am tempted to negiect this means of grace until I. feel inspired to* pray — and then that moment finds me busy once again. Once more the chance comes round' 1 and oilce again it finds me cold and un~ ! nispirod — an alternating round of disi appoiuting 1'aiiure. To ktep my soul alive my prayers must not di-prmi on feeling. I have oreative work to du and I do it. A man has a broadcasl I'ligagement to keep and keeps it, despite an overpowering sense of folly. I have a place and a. time to meet with God and even thougli I cannot feel Him near I bow before Him as I pray.