Thomas Merton’s Prayer for Discernment

At a very difficult and dark period in Thomas Merton’s life he penned this prayer that has been such a help to so many people:

O Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going,
I do not see the road ahead of me,
I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself,
And that fact that I think
I am following Your will
Does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe
That the desire to please You
Does in fact please You.
And I hope I have that desire
In all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything
Apart from that desire to please You.
And I know that if I do this
You will lead me by the right road,
Though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore I will trust You always
Though I may seem to be lost
And in the shadow of death.
I will not fear,
For You are ever with me,
And You will never leave me
To make my journey alone.

Source: Thomas Merton, Pax Christi, Benet Press, Erie, PA.

Dr Geoff Pound

Image: Thomas Merton.

Spurgeon on Tracing the Hand of God

Distinguishing the role of divine activity from human involvement is a great and impossible mystery. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who appeared to place greater emphasis on God’s part in the guidance of human lives, has this to say about tracing the hand of God in our lives:

I can see a thousand chances, as people would call them, all working together like wheels in a great piece of machinery, to fix me just where I am; and I can look back to a hundred places where, if one of those little wheels had run away—if one of those little atoms in the great whirlpool of my existence had started aside—I might have been anywhere but here, occupying a very different position.

If you cannot say this, I know I can with emphasis, and can trace God’s hand back to the period of my birth through every step I have taken; I can feel that indeed God has allotted my inheritance for me.

If any of you are so wilfully beclouded that you will not see the hand of God in your being, and will insist that all has been done by your will without Providence; that you have been left to steer your own course across the ocean of existence; and that you are where you are because your own hand guided the tiller, and your own arm directed the rudder, all I can say is, my own experience belies the fact, and the experience of many now in this place would rise in testimony against you, and say, ‘Truly, it is not in the person that walks to direct their steps.”—“We propose, but God disposes’; and the God of heavens is not unoccupied, but is engaged in over-ruling, ordering, altering, working all things according to the good pleasure of God’s will.”

Source: C H Spurgeon, The New Park Street Pulpit, 1, 255 in C H Spurgeon, Spurgeon’s Sermons Vol. XX, (Grand Rapids, Mich.:Zondervan, n.d.) 2.

Dr Geoff Pound

Image: "because your own hand guided the tiller..."