Margaret’s Song

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  There was a king in Thule,  True even to the grave;  To whom his dying mistress  A golden beaker gave.  At every feast he drained it,  Naught was to him so dear,  And often as he drained it,  Gush’d from his eyes the tear.  When death came, unrepining  His cities o’er he told;  All to his heir resigning,  Except his cup of gold.  With many a knightly vassal  At a royal feast sat he,  In yon proud hall ancestral,  In his castle o’er the sea.  Up stood the jovial monarch,  And quaff’d his last life’s glow,  Then hurled the hallow’d goblet  Into the flood below.  He saw it splashing, drinking,  And plunging in the sea;  His eyes meanwhile were sinking,  And never again drank he. “Margaret’s Song” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) in “Faust. Part I.”

6. Ways and Means of Prayer

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"praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching to this very thing with all perseverance and supplication for all saints." (Eph 6:18)

No kind of prayer is disallowed. Generally speaking, conversation with God in every form is acceptable; that is, talking with God requires no one posture, circumstance, place or time. What is disqualified however is mindless, meaningless prayer. Though the Spirit intercedes with groaning does not mean we just mystically "open up" in something we call "prayer" and let the Spirit do the rest. We don't close our eyes and go for the warm fuzzy. God would no more pay attention to this rude interruption of true prayerfulness than you or I would pay attention to someone who steps uninvited into a dialogue only to deliver blank stares. Prayer is not a thoughtful contemplative sigh that "only God understands". Prayer is not just breating in and out thinking that something spiritual is taking place.

In prayer, there will be a place or time when we "run out" of words--but this is where we get to listen in our insufficient dependence on Him.

The all-encompassing nature of prayer is specific, involving every opportunity to exploit every available kind of persistent and persevering constancy with God: acknowledging, confessing, imploring, asking, thanking, praising, interceding, listening as the Holy Spirit enables.

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