Burden | Courage | Discipleship | Endurance | Prayer | Self | Strength

PRAYING FOR ENDURANCE
Studdert Kennedy, a great chaplain in the First World War, used to tell of listening to two frightened soldiers during a heavy bombardment on their trench. In occasional pauses between the immense crashings and howlings he heard a sergeant cursing vividly and he heard a man next to him who was despairing and shivering and praying aloud for safety. He said that he found the praying the more disgusting of the two, a disgust compounded by the realization that a great deal of the prayer, in peace as in war, was in fact of that order, if not of that urgency. Studdert Kennedy asked himself, “What, then, was prayer that was not contemptible or selfish or useless?” and he concluded that true prayer is that which asks not for permission to survive but for courage to endure. Such was the prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane. Such was the prayer of the Psalmist, a prayer for courage to endure and, as such,…