05.03. CHAPTER III. God's Care for the Individual
CHAPTER III. God’s Care for the Individual
DAILY READINGS First Day, Third Week
Perhaps the greatest single difficulty in maintaining the habit of prayer is our tendency to make of it a pious form and not a vital transaction. We begin by trying to pray and end by saying prayers. To urge ourselves to a practice that has thus become a stereotyped and lifeless form is futile. Nobody ever succeeds in praying as a tour de force; but if the act of prayer can be seen as the great Christians have seen it a vital and sustaining friendship with a God who cares for every one of us praying will cease being a form and become a force and a privilege. Note the vitality of prayer as the Psalmist has experienced it, My soul, wait thou in silence for God only;
For my expectation is from him.
He only is my rock and my salvation:
He is my high tower; I shall not be moved.
With God is my salvation and my glory:
The rock of my strength, and my refuge, is in God.
Trust in him at all times, ye people;
Pour out your heart before him:
God is a refuge for us. Psalms 62:5-8. In confirmation of this same experience in our own day, consider the testimony of Sir Wilfred Grenfell: "The privilege of prayer to me is one of the most cherished possessions, because faith and experience alike convince me that God himself sees and answers, and his answers I never venture to criticise. It is only my part to ask. It is entirely his to give or withhold, as he knows is best. If it were otherwise, I would not dare to pray at all. In the quiet of home, in the heat of life and strife, in the face of death, the privilege of speech with God is inestimable. I value it more because it calls for nothing that the wayfaring man, though a fool, cannot give that is, the simplest expression to his simplest desire. When I can neither see, nor hear, nor speak, still I can pray so that God can hear. When I finally pass through the valley of the shadow of death, I expect to pass through it in conversation with him."
O Lord, renew our spirits and draw our hearts unto Thy self that our work may not be to us a burden, but a delight; and give us such a mighty love to Thee as may sweeten all our obedience. Oh, let us not serve Thee with the spirit of bondage as slaves, but with the cheerfulness and gladness of children, delighting ourselves in Thee and rejoicing in Thy work. Amen. Benjamin Jenks (1646-1724).
Second Day, Third Week
One of the root reasons why prayer becomes merely a pious form is that while people believe in God in a general and vague fashion, they do not vividly grasp the idea that God cares for and is dealing with every one of us.
How think ye? If any man have a hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and go unto the mountains, and seek that which goeth astray? And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth over it more than over the ninety and nine which have not gone astray. Even so it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish. Matthew 18:12-14. A man may hold true this individual care of God for each of his children, and still may not practice habitual prayer, but it is difficult to see how anyone can practice habitual prayer if he does not hold for true that God loves every one of us. Who can continue praying, in any Christian sense, to a God that does not care? For prayer, at least, a God who does not care, does not count. Haeckel, the materialist, has displaced the Creator by a primal substance which he solemnly crowns Emperor of the universe under the title of "Mobile Cosmic Ether." Can we imagine anyone finding vital and sustaining help in supplications addressed to such an object, or are vast congregations likely to be stirred in adoration, praying, "O Mobile Cosmic Ether, hallowed be thy name!" Why not? Is not the reason simply this, that the God to whom real prayer is made must care for us as a race and as individuals?
Almighty God, the refuge of all that arc distressed, grant unto us that, in all trouble of this our mortal life, we may flee to the knowledge of Thy lovingkindness and tender mercy; that so, sheltering ourselves therein, the storms of life may pass over us, and not shake the peace of God that is within us. Whatsoever this life may bring us, grant that it ma\ never take from us the full faith that Thou art our Father. Grant us Thy light, that we may have life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. A men. George Dawson (1821-1876).
Third Day, Third Week Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? and not one of them shall fall on the ground without your Father: but the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows. Matthew 10:29-31.
Let us face again today that formality in prayer that comes from a failure to grasp the individual love of God. There are real difficulties for the mind to face when it tries to believe that God so cares for each of us, but perhaps even greater for most people is the difficulty that the imagination faces. In this vast universe how can we picture God as caring for every individual thing, even to stricken sparrows and to the hairs of our head? Consider, however, the scientific truth of gravitation, that the whole earth rises to meet a child’s ball, just as truly as the ball falls to meet the earth, and that only the lack of sensitiveness in our instruments prevents us from measuring the earth’s ascent as it responds to the pull of the child’s toy. Can we imagine that? Is it not unimaginable, though plainly true? And if in a gravitate system a whole planet moves to meet a tossed ball, we ought not to dismiss, for reasons of weak imagination, the truth that in a love-system of persons, the Eternal God responds to each child’s approach. As Kipling sings, "Who clears the grounding berg, And guides the grinding floe, He hears the cry of the little kit fox, And the lemming on the snow."
O Thou good omnipotent, who so cares for every one of us, as if Thou carest for him alone; and so for all, as if all were but one! Blessed is the man who loveth Thee, and his friend in Thee, and his enemy for Thee. I behold how some things pass away that others may replace them, but Thou dost never depart. O God, my Father, supremely good, Beauty of all things beautiful, to Thee will I intrust what soever I have received from Thee, and so shall I lose nothing. Thou madest me for Thyself, and my heart is restless until it repose in Thee. Amen. St. Augustine (354-430).
Fourth Day, Third Week Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on me through their word; that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us: that the world may believe that thou didst send me. And the glory which thou hast given me I have given unto them; that they may be one, even as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one; that the world may know that thou didst send me, and lovedst them, even as thou lovedst me. John 17:20-23.
It is easy to think that God’s love centered about the Master, but consider what it would mean for prayer vitally to believe that God so cares for each of us "lovedst them, even as thou lovedst me!" As Silvester Home puts it in his Yale lectures: "What is the Gospel? It is contained in a verse of one of the greatest Christian hymns, Were the whole realm of Nature mine, That were a present far too small! Love so amazing, so Divine, Demands my soul! That is to say that my soul is a greater and bigger thing than the whole realm of nature. Do you believe it? I agree it is the most romantic of all beliefs. It affirms that the soul of every forced laborer on the Amazon is of more value than all the mines of Johannesburg, all the diamonds of Kimberly, all the millions of all the magnates of America. It affirms that in God’s sight all the suns and stars that people infinite space, are of inferior worth to one human spirit dwelling, it may be, in the degraded body of some victim of drink or lust, some member of the gutter population of a great city who has descended to his doom by means of the multiplied temptations with which our so-called society environs him. It is a romantic creed. But if it is not true Christianity itself is false." Has your failure in prayer been due to your failure in apprehending for yourself this heart of the Gospel?
O God, mercifully grant unto us that the fire of Thy love may burn up in us all things that displease Thee, and make us meet for Thy heavenly Kingdom. Roman Breviary.
Fifth Day, Third Week For we have not a high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but one that hath been in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and may find grace to help us in time of need. Hebrews 4:15-16.
Note the sequence of thought in these verses: first, the revelation in Christ of a God who cares; and second, resultant confidence in the reality of prayer. In contrast with this reality of prayer to those who apprehend the personal love of God, consider how many people know prayer only as an inherited bit of propriety. Prayer to them is a formality because it is a practice taught in infancy, and maintained by force of habit as a tradition. It is not vital. It does not mean "Grace to help us in time of need." They are true to George Eliot’s description of Hetty in Adam Bede: "Hetty was one of those numerous people who have had god-fathers and god-mothers, learned their catechism, been confirmed, and gone to church every Sunday, and yet for any practical result of strength in life, or trust in death, have never appropriated a single Christian idea or Christian feeling." Over against such a futile form of religion consider a vital prayer like this of Thomas a Kempis, founded on the thought of God’s individual love.
Ah, Lord God, Thou holy Lover of my soul, when Thou comest into my soul, all that is within me shall rejoice. Thou art my Glory and the exultation of my heart; Thou art my Hope and Refuge in the day of my trouble. Set me free from all evil passions, and heal my heart of all inordinate affections; that, being inwardly cured and thoroughly cleansed, I may be made fit to love, courageous to suffer, steady to persevere. Nothing is sweeter than Love, nothing more courageous, nothing fuller nor better in heaven and earth; because Love is born of God, and cannot rest but in God, above all created things. Let me love Thee more than my self, nor love myself but for Thee. Amen. Thomas a Kempis (1379-1471).
Sixth Day, Third Week To many people prayer is a pious practice rather than a vital transaction, not so much because it is an inherited bit of propriety, but because it is looked upon as a good work which wins merit in the eyes of God. Men think of prayer as a safe practice to indulge in if they are to keep on good terms with God. They go through it as a courtier might observe the rituals of obeisance that please the king and the neglect of which might get a careless man into trouble. Prayer to many is a safety appliance, like a lightning-rod, upward raised lest the Eternal God, seeing their neglect, fall foul of them. It is founded on fear. They conceive that the saying of prayer is a measure of protection which they would better attend to. What a pitiful misunderstanding of prayer! Prayer is not a "good work" in return for which a blessing is given, as men buy and sell over the counter. Our pious practices are as useless as a Tibetan prayer wheel, unless at the heart of them all is conscious fellowship with the Father who cares. Listen to Isaiah’s expression of God’s contempt for formal worship without spiritual meaning, What unto me is the multitude of your sacrifices? saith Jehovah: I have had enough of the burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to trample my courts? Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; new moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with iniquity and the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth; they are a trouble unto me; I am weary of bearing them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood. Isaiah 1:11-15.
Most loving Lord, give me a childlike love of Thee, which may cast out all fear. Amen. E. B. Pusey (1800-1882).
Seventh Day, Third Week For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ. Romans 8:14-17. In the light of this passage how impossible to think of saying prayers as merely a pious practice. Prayer seen in the light of this Christian truth becomes at once the claiming of our sonship, the appropriation of our heritage. All through the New Testament the reader is conscious that wealth is waiting to be claimed. "Unsearchable riches of Christ," "Rich toward God," "Heirs of God," phrases such as these suggest the sense of spiritual wealth in which the first Christians rejoiced. They had found an Eldorado in the Gospel that God loved every son of man. Now, prayer is the active appropriation of this wealth. Of how many of us is it true that friendship with God is an unclaimed heritage! We have the title-deeds in our church membership, but we do not have the spiritual riches in our lives. In our prayers we are not appropriating our faith that God really does care.
Grant me, even me, my dearest Lord, to know Thee, and love Thee, and rejoice in Thee. And, if I cannot do these perfectly in this life, let me at least advance to higher degrees every day, till I can come to do them in perfection. Let the knowledge of Thee increase in me here, that it may be full hereafter. Let the love of Thee grow every day more and more here, that it may be perfect hereafter; that my joy may be great in itself, and full in Thee. I know, O God, that Thou art a God of truth; O make good Thy gracious promises to me, that my joy may be full. Amen. St. Augustine (354-430).
COMMENT FOR THE WEEK
I When a man, making earnest with prayer, sets himself to practice communion with God, he is likely to awaken with a start some day to a disturbing reflection. "This thing that I am doing," he well may say, "presupposes that the Almighty God takes a personal interest in me. I am taking for granted when I pray that the Eternal is specially solicitous on my behalf. Praying may seem a simple matter, but on what an enormous assumption does it rest!" Now, this reflection accords entirely with the facts. Prayer does involve confidence that God takes interest in the individual who prays. The fact, for example, that the Bible is preeminently a book of prayer, involves of necessity the companion fact that the God of the Bible cares for individuals. He knows all the stars by name (Psalms 147:4); he numbers the hairs of our heads (Matthew 10:30); of all the sparrows "not one of them is forgotten in the sight of God" (Luke 12:6). John is expressing his thought of God as well as his interpretation of Christ when he says, "He calleth his own sheep by name" (John 10:3). God is like a shepherd who misses even one lost from his flock, a housewife who seeks for a single coin, a father who grieves for one boy gone wrong (Luke 15:1-32). Of all the children in the world, says Jesus, "It is not the will of your Father... that one of these little ones should perish" (Matthew 18:14). Throughout the Bible, and especially in the New Testament, God is not a king dealing with men in masses. He is no Napoleon, who, warned by Metternich that a campaign would cost a million men, said, "What are a million men to me?" God is a father, and the essence of fatherhood is individual care for the children. For all that there are so many of us, as St. Augustine said, He loves us every one as though there were but one of us to lore." That is the message of the Book, and it underlies the possibility of vital prayer. This truth that God cares for every one of us is easy to. speak about, beautiful to contemplate, but hard to believe. How can God care for each of us? We know the heart of Jesus well enough to understand that he loved every one he met. But God? How can we make it real to ourselves that he who sustains the milky way, who holds Orion and the Pleiades in his leash, knows us by name?
II For one thing, we seem too small and insignificant for him to know. If God cares for each of us, that presupposes in us a degree of value and importance surpassing imagination; and as one considers the vastness of the physical universe, it seems almost unbelievable that individual men can be worth so much. Even the Psalmist felt the wonder of man’s worth in such a world, when he cried: "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that thou visitest him?" (Psalms 8:3-4). The Psalmist, however, never saw more than 6, 000 stars on the clearest night when he looked at the sky from the heights of Zion. We today can see 100, 000, 000 of them through our telescopes; and when we put a photographic plate, instead of our eyes, at the orifice of the instrument, we obtain indications of multitudes more. When, therefore, a modern psalmist like Tennyson thinks of man’s possible value in so great a universe, he feels the terrific urge of doubt; he gathers all the activities of mankind, our wars, politics, arts and sciences, and cries, "What is it all but the murmur of gnats In the gleam of a million million suns?" How in the face of this new knowledge of the universe can we pray in the confidence that God knows and cares for each one of us?
Many a man’s faith is undone and his prayers stopped by this appalling contrast between the size of the world and his own smallness. The microscope, however, should counteract a little the disheartening influence of the telescope. It is evident that the Power which cares for the stars cares for all things with utter disregard of size. Inside any common pin as marvelous activity is going on as ever was present among the stars. Here are electrons so many and so small that the race in a million years could not count them, and yet not one electron touches another. In comparison with their size they are as far apart as the planets of a solar system. Endlessly they revolve about each other, and no one ever slips by an infinitesimal degree from the control of law. Not strong reason but weak imagination leads us to be terrified by the mere size of the universe into the thought that God cannot care for us. So far as physical nature has any testimony to bear on the matter at all, she says, "There is nothing too great for the Creator to accomplish, and nothing too small for him to attend to. The microscopic world is his, as well as the stars." The real answer to our doubt, however, comes not from physical nature at all, but from spiritual insight. We are so small that God cannot care for every one of us? But surely, we ourselves are not accustomed to judge comparative value by size. As children we may have chosen a penny rather than a dime because the penny was larger; but as maturity arrives, that basis of choice is outgrown. The dearest possessions of the human race diamonds and little children, for example are rather notable for their comparative smallness. A mother’s love for her baby is not a matter of pounds and ounces. When one believes in God at all, the consequence is plain. God must have at least our spiritual insight to perceive the difference between size and worth. Mere bulk can not deceive him. He must know where in all his universe the real values lie. As to where the real values do lie, the thoughtful of all races have unanimously agreed that they are found inside personality, not outside of it. Tennyson’s word is a summary of the best thought of all time: "For tho the Giant Ages heave the hill And break the shore, and evermore Make and break, and work their will Tho world on world in myriad myriads roll Round us, each with different powers, And other forms of life than ours, What know we greater than the soul?" The thinker is of nobler worth than any external thing that he can think about; the seer is more wonderful than all he sees; and righteousness, friendship, generosity, courage, wisdom, love, functions of personality, all of them, are, so far as value goes, worth more than infinite galaxies of stars. No star ever knew that it was even being gazed upon. No star ever felt God’s hand upon it, or was moved by gratitude for its creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life. As an astronomer watches the unconscious heavens, does not God know, as we do, that the man, with his powers of vision, intellect, volition, and character, is far more marvelous than all the stars he sees? We may as well deny God’s existence altogether, as, granting his existence, affirm that he is enamoured by hugeness, in love with avoirdupois, and blind to spiritual values. To gain the whole world and lose a soul would be a poor bargain for God as well as for man. Personality is the one infinitely valuable treasure in the universe. If God is, he cares; if he cares, he cares for personality. "For Jehovah’s portion is his people" (Deuteronomy 32:9).
III The difficulty which many experience in trying to conceive of God’s individual care, is complicated by the fact that not only are we small, but there are countless multitudes of us. With so many people, how can God know us all by name? This difficulty is one of the commonest stumbling blocks to prayer, and yet its mere statement ought to be its sufficient refutation. Could anything be more plainly an attempt to make God in man’s image than this suggestion that his powers may be inadequate to his responsibilities? "It is hard for us to keep individual interest in many people," we are saying, "therefore it must be hard for God." This crude and childish imposition of our human limitations on God, this fear that he will find it trying to remember so many, springs not from good reason but from immature thoughtlessness.
"There was an old woman, who lived in a shoe; She had so many children, she didn t know what to do." Is that nursery rhyme to represent our picture of God?
We may help ourselves to the conception of God’s individual care, which is essential to all vital and earnest praying, by noting that knowledge, when it moves out toward omniscience, always breaks up vague masses into individual units, and cares for each of them. When an ignoramus goes into a library, he can see only long rows of books, almost indistinguishable as units. But when the librarian comes, the student and lover of books, he knows each one by name. Each volume has its special associations; he knows the edition, the value, the contents, the author, the purpose. He takes down one book after another, revealing his individual appreciation of each. The more he knows, as a librarian, the less he sees books in the mass; the more he knows them one by one.
Increasing knowledge is always thus not extensive only but intensive. The average man returns from seeing the turbines at Niagara, with a vague impression of enormous masses moving at tremendous speed. But the engineer? He knows every bolt and screw, every lever and piston: he knows the particular details of secret bearing and balanced strain; he pokes his wrench around dark corners for hidden bolts that the spectator never guessed were there. The more he knows, as an engineer, the more he sees the details and not the bulk. Ignorance sees things in mass] knowledge breaks all masses up into units and knows each one; omniscience perfectly understands and cares for every most minute detail.
Consider then the meaning of God’s knowledge of men. When a stranger thinks of China, he imagines a vague multitude, with faces that look all alike. When a missionary thinks of China, the vague multitude is shaken loose in one spot, and individuals there stand out, separately known and loved. When God thinks of China, he knows every one of the Chinese by name. He does for humanity what a librarian does for his books, cr an engineer for his turbines. We stand, every one, separate in his thought. He lifts us up from the obscurity of our littleness; he picks us out from the multitude of our fellows; he gives to our lives the dignity of his individual care. The Eternal God calls us every one by name. He is not the God of mankind in the mass; he is the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob! All great prayers have lived in the power of this individual relation ship with God. They have said with the Psalmist, "I will give thanks in the great assembly: I will praise thee among much people." (Psalms 35:18.)
IV So important is the vital apprehension of this truth that we may well approach it from another angle. When one believes in God at all, he must believe that God has a purpose for the universe as a whole. The seers have uttered this faith in scores of figures, but no one of them is adequate to express the full meaning of this confidence that creation means something, has a goal, is not a blind accident, but a wise plan. "Nothing walks with aimless feet," says Tenny son. "There are no accidents with God," says Longfellow. All who believe in God must somehow share this faith. For them there is a divine purpose that "binds in one book the scattered leaves of all the universe." Indeed, most men do believe this. The contrary position makes life too empty and futile to be easily tolerable. If there is no purpose in creation at all, if it came from nowhere, is going nowhere, and means nothing, then the world is like a busy seamstress sewing on a machine with no thread in it. The centuries move like cloths beneath the biting needle, but no thread binds them. Nothing is being done. The years will pass; the machine will wear out; the scrap-heap will claim it; but there will be nothing to show for all its toil. That is the world without divine purpose; and because such an outlook on life makes it utterly vain and futile, most men do believe in "one far-off divine event, toward which the whole creation moves." They believe that there is a thread of divine purpose in this ma chine of the universe and that it binds the separate centuries together. As soon as we speak of this general purpose of God, however, an inevitable corollary faces us. Can God have a purpose for the whole and not for the parts? Can an architect thoroughly plan a house without planning the details? Shall he stand upon the site and say in a vague and sweeping way, "Let there be a house"? But, if you ask him about the chimney angles and the window frames, shall he answer, "There is no plan for them"? Rather planning a house consists in arranging the parts. And when we turn from dealing with things to deal with persons, each one so individual and unique, how much more clear the truth is! No father can love his family in general, without loving the several mem bers of it in particular. So God can neither care nor plan for his world as a whole, without caring and planning for each of the individuals that make his world. The faith of the Bible, in the individual knowledge, love, and purpose of God for each of us is not mere sentiment. It is the inevitable corollary of theism. No man can think through the meaning of belief in God without coming to it. Purpose for the universe and purpose for each life are two aspects of the same thing and they mutually involve each other. You can as easily find a shield with only one side as a purpose that concerns the whole and not the parts. Here, too, God calls us every one by name. As an Indian poet sings, "The subtle anklets that ring on the feet of an insect when it moves are heard of Him."
Whether, therefore, we consider the fact that God must care for value rather than for size; or the fact that knowledge, as it grows, always breaks up masses into units and under stands each one of them; or the fact that no love and purpose in general can fail to include the particular parts, we come to the same conclusion: God’s individual care for us is not only a reasonable, it is an inevitable corollary of our faith. Of course, God numbers the hairs of our heads! Just that sort of thing infinite knowledge necessarily implies. Of course, the Scripture cries in a passage, quoted by Jesus, "All of you sons of the Most High!" (Psalms 82:6). Just that -must be said when the fatherhood of God is believed at all. Of course, it is not God’s will that "one of these little ones should perish" (Matthew 18:14). How could he care for all and not for each? Of course, Jesus says, "Having shut thy door, pray to thy Father who is in secret" (Matthew 6:6). For trust in God’s individual love, if it have normal growth, must always flower out in prayer.
Indeed, prayer is the personal appropriation of this faith that God cares for each of us. When a man really prays he no longer leaves his thought of God’s individual care as a theory, held in his mind, beautiful but ineffective. He now avails himself of the truth which he sees; he thrusts his life out upon it; he enters into that fellowship with God of which the creed is the theory, and prayer is the practice. It is one thing to think that a man is your friend; it is another thing actively to enter into friendly relations with him. So some men merely believe that God is, and that he cares for them; but some richly profit by their faith, so acting upon it in prayer that vague belief about God passes over into transforming relationship with him. Belief by itself is a map of the un- visited land of God’s care; prayer is actually traveling the country. The tragedy of the church is to be found in the thousands who fondle their credal maps, on which are marked the roadways of God’s friendship, but who do not travel. They would resent any sceptical doubt about God’s love for every individual, but they do not in habitual reliance and communion take advantage of the faith they hold. They miss the daily guidance, the consciousness of divine resource, the sustaining sense of God’s presence, which can come only to those who both believe that God cares for each, and who in habitual communion with him are making earnest with their faith.
When, therefore, we have satisfied our minds of God’s individual care, we have arrived at the beginning, not at the end of the matter. Now comes the vital and searching task of laying hold on the experience of that care, in whose existence we believe. We must pass from thought into spiritual activity, from the "industrious squirrel work of the brain" into an adventure of the soul in the practice of prayer. The Gospel offers a great privilege; prayer appropriates it. In Calvin’s vivid figure, "Prayer digs out those treasures which the Gospel of the Lord discovers to our faith."
SUGGESTIONS FOR THOUGHT AND DISCUSSION
What makes prayer a pious form rather than a vital transaction?
What gave vitality to the Psalmist’s prayer? What is the difference between a Buddhist turning a prayer wheel and a Christian praying? What merit is there in praying?
What is the estimate of the value of the individual in the Christian religion?
What was Jesus view as set forth in the Daily Readings?
What place has the individual had in the history of the Church?
How does the Christian religion differ from other religions in its estimate of the worth of the individual?
How far are Christians justified in basing their confidence in prayer on God’s care for the individual?
Is the possibility of prayer dependent upon God’s care for the individual?
To what extent is prayer futile if God does not care for us?
What are your chief difficulties in a belief that God cares for each individual? To what extent do you feel these difficulties make prayer impossible?
How far is it reasonable to think that God cares for us?
What difference will it make in my prayers if I really believe God cares for me as an individual?