Never think that you are kneeling or standing alone, rather think that the whole of Christendom, all devout Christians, are standing there beside you and you are standing among them in a common, united petition which God cannot disdain. -- Blessed Martin Luther,
Treasury, p. 1087
As if God ever might take a disdainful attitude toward anyone seeking to follow Him??
ReplyDeleteOf course not, but there are times in God's discipline and training of us, where we feel as though he HAS disdained our prayer, other times where we recognize how great our sin is that we question whether we should even be praying in the first place, and so on. Dr. Luther reminds us that when we speak to Our Father, we're standing with the whole host of His children; It's never just us alone. Shoot, I'd have thought an Orthodox would have LOVED that point! :)
ReplyDeleteOh, yes, I love the idea - if it were only so that we were all standing standing together - but not if it is to present a united front toward an otherwise possibly disdainful God.
ReplyDeleteThe cure for that feeling is not to try to pressure God by numbers, but to have more faith in His absolute, unconditional, infinite love for each one of us at all times, no matter what.
And I think that Dr. Luther would laugh a hearty laugh and give a HUGE Amen to that. He wouldn't want his words to be heard otherwise. After all, in the Larger Catechism he describes our God as a fountain that gushes nothing but good!
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