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“Father, into your hands I commit my Spirit.”
“Every highest human act is just a giving back to God of that which he first gave to us,” writes George MacDonald. In Jesus’ last words we see how prayer finds the Father both the source and destination of our prayer; both the subject and the object of our worship.
“Every act of worship is holding up to God of what God has made us… the way to worship God while the daylight lasts is to work; the service of God, the only “divine service,” is the helping of our fellows.
I give myself back to you. Take me, soothe me, refresh me, make me over again. Amy I going out into the business and turmoil of the day, where so many temptations may come to do less honourably, less faithfully, less kindly, less diligently that the Ideal Man would dive me do? Father, into your hands. Am I going to do a good deed? Then, of all times, Father, into your hands, lest the enemy should have me now. Am I going to do a hard duty, from which I would gladly be turned aside – to refuse a friends request, to urge a neighbour’s conscience? – Father into your hands I commit my spirit.
Am I in pain? Is illness coming upon me to shut out the glad visions of a healthy rain, and bring me such as are troubled and untrue? Take my spirit, Lord, and see that if has no more to bear than it can bear. Am I going to die? Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. For it is your business, no mine. You will know every shade of my suffering; You will care for me with your perfect fatherhood… I care not for the pain, so long as my spirit is strong, and into your hands I commit that spirit. If your love, which is better than life, receive it, then surely your tenderness will make it great.”
Written by George MacDonald from “The Unspoken Sermons” quoted in “Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter.“
