It’s time for another visit with our Puritan friends. Though the whole of it has and continues to minister to me, the following prayer taken from The Valley of Vision contain emphases that I have made which have particularly impacted my life:

O Thou Most High,

It becomes me to be low in your presence. I am nothing compared with you;

I possess not the rank and power of angels, but you have made me what I am, and placed me where I am; help me to acquiesce in your sovereign pleasure.

I thank you that in the embryo state of my endless being I am capable by grace of improvement; that I can bear your image, not by submissiveness, but by design, and can work with you and advance your cause and glory.

But, alas, the crown has fallen from my head: I have sinned; I am alien to you; my head is deceitful and wicked, my mind an enemy to your law.

Yet, in my lostness you have laid help on the Mighty One and he comes between to put his hands on us both, my Umpire, Daysman, Mediator, whose blood is my peace, whose righteousness is my strength, whose condemnation is my freedom, whose Spirit is my power, whose heaven is my heritage.

Grant that I may feel more the strength of your grace in subduing the evil of my nature, in loosing me from the present evil world, in supporting me under the trials of life, in enabling me to abide with you in my valleys, in exercising me to have a conscience void of offence before you and before men.

In all my affairs may I distinguish between duty and anxiety, and may my character and not my circumstances chiefly engage me.

Though this prayer is entitled “Contrition,” for me it provides “Divine perspective.”

Pastor Megilligan