03.15. How Can We Secure The Closed Door?
How Can We Secure The Closed Door?
How is it possible to keep the world from coming in and the mind from straying out? Concentration on any subject is a severe strain upon the mind, and nowhere is it so difficult as in the place and practice of private prayer. An enemy is there to raise bogies, excite conscience, jog memory, and direct invaders of the sacred hour. Some simple device will usually secure the secret place from intrusion.
General Gordon pinned a white handkerchief at the opening of his tent. I hang a card outside the door when I wish to be alone. That is simple enough, but though it may keep people out, it is useless against the distractions of the mind, and a body may just as well be roaming at large as be shut in with a wandering mind. How can the door be so shut as to keep out the things that divert and distract?
Attention is an act of the will. Concentration is sustained attention upon a specific object. The will can be disciplined and the power of concentration developed. An educated mind is trained to attention, discrimination, and concentration. By patience the soul is won, and by discipline the mind is trained. God is in secret. Let the first act be to affirm the fact of the Holy presence. Call every faculty of mind and body to remembrance, recognition, and realization of the God that is in secret and seeth in secret. Hold the mind to this fact. Tolerate no distraction, allow no diversion, indulge no dissipation. Every faculty must be alert. Of the apostles in the holy mount it is said they were heavy with sleep, but when they were fully awake they saw His glory. Dreaming is not meditation. Dozing is not thinking. Moping is not praying. Prayer in the secret place unvaryingly demands that every faculty should be at its best. Our Lord gave His disciples a form and order of prayer, and it does not begin with either song or supplication, but with the contemplation of God: Our Father, Which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
It is in this way all the great prayers of the Bible begin. That is how I find it helpful to begin. I think in adoring love and wonder of His character and attributes, of His majesty and might, of His grace and glory. Musing kindles the fire, and the flame becomes "a wall of fire round about," which keeps beasts and intruders as a safe distance. That is why I so often find that prayer in the secret place begins with the Doxology, and abounds in glory and thanksgiving. It is there the transfigured Lord is seen.