The Mystery of Godliness

By Ronnie Bray

The ‘Mystery of Godliness’ is a complex matter to which no single article

can do justice. However, we can address one part of that mystery that
confounds atheists and thus lets them poke a little fun at believers. That is
the nature of the individual having access to the ear of God through prayer,
and receiving blessings that are particularly sought, and at other times arrive
unsought.

The truth of the position that God hears all prayers in whatever language and
at whatever time even when millions of voices are raised in petition in an
hundred or more languages amid the clamour of an ugly and noisy world is
incapable of being understood by any that has not known the fulfilment of
urgent pleading in these and similar circumstances.

Yet the broken, impatient, desperate, and lonely heart attests that through the
noise of battle or the silence of isolation their voices have reached the ears of
their Father in Heaven, as if the universe was as silent as the tomb and theirs
the only plaint ascending through the immensity of space to that place where
God dwells and hears our entreaties.

And in response from the King of the Universe to the beseecher comes the
very blessing required to bind up the broken, fill the lonely, calm the
impatient, feed the needy, and comfort the isolated and bereaved heart as if
they and God were the only two enjoying that divine transaction.

To the unbeliever we readily admit that we know not the mechanism or its
operation in receiving what is sought from the Fulfiller of our needs, but that
answers come to our prayers that are uniquely qualified to satisfy them, we
know from long experience, and that is something no doubter can invalidate.

With Saint Augustine we shake our heads as we aver that God loves each
one of us as if there was only one. How it works we do not know, but that it
does work we are certain, and His blessings are the only confirmation we
need.
Copyright © 2011 – Ronnie Bray