Saturday, December 10, 2016

At Home, Arlington, Massachusetts
 
I've been working on my Jonathan Edwards paper for my Harvard class and I came across the following passage on Sarah Edwards. I started crying reading these words because they were just so convicting. And beautiful.
 
Oh, Lord, please move in my heart to have this same concern for my baby. Please, I am so selfish. Please remind me to pray more for this little baby. People say that having a child will teach you to be less selfish, but that doesn't strike me as inevitable. There are many selfish parents out there in the world. Please move in my heart to think more of others than of myself. Amen.
 
“But this was not all, in which she express’d her care for her children. She thought that parents had great and important duty to do towards their children before they were capable of government and instruction. For them she constantly and earnestly pray’d, and bore them on her heart before God, in all her secret and most solemn addresses to him; and that even before they were born. The evidences of her pregnancy, and consideration that it was with a rational, immortal creature, which came into existence in an undone, and infinitely dreadful state, was sufficient to lead her to bow before God daily for his blessing on it; even redemption, and eternal life by Jesus Christ. So that thro’ all the pain, labour and sorrow, which attended her being the mother of children, she was in travail for them, that they might be born of GOD by having Christ formed in them.” - Samuel Hopkins
 
God, part of the problem is my selfishness. But part of the problem is that I just don't pray. Apart from sporadic mornings, I don't set aside time to be quiet before you and pray. How can I have such a heart to pray for my child if I don't have a heart to pray in the first place? Maybe it's not two problems, but really just one – selfishness. Maybe my inability to pray consistently and to spend time with you is just that – selfishness. I don't want to give up my time, my control, my mind. I don't want to work at it. Is that just selfishness? Lord, please, teach me to pray.

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