Dark Hours: Prayer and Resignation in Affliction
By Paley
DARK HOURS.—“But if a man live many years, and rejoice in them all; yet let him remember the days of darkness.” Eccl. 11: 8.
Scenes of deep distress await us all. It is in vain to expect to pass through the world without falling into them. We have in our Lord’s example a model for our behaviour in the most severe and most trying of these occasions; afflicted, yet resigned; grieved and wounded, yet submissive; not insensible of our sufferings, but increasing the ardor and fervency of our prayer in proportion to the pain and acuteness of our feelings. But whatever may be the fortune of our lives, one great extremity, at least, the hour of approaching death, is certainly to be passed through. What ought then to occupy us? What can then support us? Prayer, prayer, with our blessed Lord himself, was a refuge from the storm; almost every word he uttered, during that tremendous scene, was prayer: prayer the most earnest, the most urgent—repeated, continued, proceeding from the recesses of his soul—private, solitary—prayer for deliverance—prayer for strength—above everything, prayer for resignation.—Paley.