The Song of the Animals

Title: The Song of the Animals by Elizabeth Elliott

A very tall man, wrapped in a steamer rug,
kneeling alone by a chair. When I think of my
father, who died in 1963, this is often the first
image that comes to mind. It was the habit of his
life to rise early in the morning--usually
between 4:30 and 5:00 --to study his Bible and to
pray.

We did not often see him during that solitary
hour (he purposed to make it solitary), but we
were used to seeing him on his knees. He had
family prayers every morning after breakfast. We
began with a hymn; then he read from the Bible to
us; and we all knelt to pray. As we grew older,
we were encouraged to pray alone as well.

Few people know what to do with solitude when it
is forced upon them; even fewer arrange for
solitude regularly. This is not to suggest that
we should neglect meeting with other believers
for prayer (Hebrews 10:25), but the foundation of
our devotional life is our own private
relationship with God.

My father, an honest and humble disciple of the
Lord Jesus, wanted to follow his example: "Very
early in the morning…Jesus got up, left the house
and went off to a solitary place, where he
prayed" (Mark 1:35).

Christians may (and ought to) pray anytime and
anywhere, but we cannot well do without a special
time and place to be alone with God. Most of us
find that early morning is not an easy time to
pray. I wonder if there is an easy time.

The simple fact is that early morning is probably
the only time when we can be fairly sure of not
being interrupted. Where can we go? Into "your
closet," was what the Lord said in Matthew 6:6,
meaning any place apart from the eyes and the
ears of others. Jesus went to the hills, to the
wilderness, to a garden; the apostles to the
seashore or to an upper room; Peter to a
housetop.

We may need to find a literal closet or a
bathroom or a parked car. We may walk outdoors
and pray. But we must arrange to pray, to be
alone with God sometime every day, to talk to him
and to listen to what he wants to say to us.

The Bible is God's message to everybody. We
deceive ourselves if we claim to want to hear his
voice but neglect the primary channel through
which it comes. We must read his Word. We must
obey it. We must live it, which means rereading
it throughout our lives. I think my father read
it more than forty times.

When we have heard God speak, what then shall we
say to God? In an emergency or when we suddenly
need help, the words come easily: "Oh, God!" or
"Lord, help me!" During our quiet time, however,
it is a good thing to remember that we are here
not to pester God but to adore him.

All creation praises him all the time--the winds,
the tides, the oceans, the rivers, move in
obedience; the song sparrow and the wonderful
burrowing wombat, the molecules in their cells,
the stars in their courses, the singing whales
and the burning seraphim do without protest or
slovenliness exactly what their Maker intended,
and thus praise him.

We read that our Heavenly Father actually looks
for people who will worship him in spirit and in
reality. Imagine! God is looking for worshippers.
Will he always have to go to a church to find
them, or might there be one here and there in an
ordinary house, kneeling alone by a chair, simply
adoring him?

How do we adore him? Adoration is not merely
unselfish. It doesn't even take into
consideration that the self exists. It is utterly
consumed with the object adored.

Once in a while, a human face registers
adoration. The groom in a wedding may seem to
worship the approaching bride, but usually he has
a few thoughts for himself--how does he look in
this absurd ruffled shirt that she asked him to
wear, what should he do with his hands at this
moment, what if he messes up the vows?

I have seen adoration more than once on faces in
a crowd surrounding a celebrity, but only when
they were unaware of the television cameras, and
only when there was not the remotest possibility
that the celebrity would notice them. For a few
seconds, they forgot themselves altogether.

When I stumble out of bed in the morning, put on
a robe, and go into my study, words do not spring
spontaneously to my lips--other than words like,
"Lord, here I am again to talk to you. It's cold.
I'm not feeling terribly spiritual...." Who can
go on and on like that morning after morning, and
who can bear to listen to it day after day?

I need help in order to worship God. Nothing
helps me more than the Psalms. Here we find human
cries--of praise, adoration, anguish, complaint,
petition. There is an immediacy, an authenticity,
about those cries. They speak for me to God--that
is, they say what I often want to say, but for
which I cannot find words.

Surely the Holy Spirit preserved those Psalms in
order that we might have paradigms of prayer and
of our individual dealings with God. It is
immensely comforting to find that even David, the
great king, wailed about his loneliness, his
enemies, his pains, his sorrows, and his fears.
But then he turned from them to God in paeans of
praise.

He found expression for praise far beyond my poor
powers, so I use his and am lifted out of myself,
up into heights of adoration, even though I'm
still the same ordinary woman alone in the same
little room.

Another source of assistance for me has been the
great hymns of the Church, such as "Praise, My
Soul, the King of Heaven," "New Every Morning Is
the Love," "Great Is Thy Faithfulness," "Glorious
Things of Thee Are Spoken," and ''O Worship the
King." The third stanza of that last one delights
me. It must delight God when I sing it to him:

Thy bountiful care, what tongue can recite?
It breathes in the air, it shines in the light;
It streams from the hills, it descends to the
plain,
And sweetly distills in the dew and the rain.

That's praise. By putting into words things on
earth for which we thank him, we are training
ourselves to be ever more aware of such things as
we live our lives. It is easy otherwise to be
oblivious of the thousand evidences of his care.
Have you thought of thanking God for light and
air, because in them his care breathes and
shines?

Hymns often combine praise and petition, which
are appropriate for that time alone with God. The
beautiful morning hymn "Awake, My Soul, and With
the Sun" has these stanzas:

All praise to Thee, who safe hast kept,
And hast refreshed me while I slept.
Grant, Lord, when I from death shall wake,
I may of endless light partake.
Direct, control, suggest, this day,
All I design, or do, or say;
That all my powers, with all their might,
In Thy sole glory may unite.

Adoration should be followed by confession.
Sometimes it happens that I can think of nothing
that needs confessing. This is usually a sign
that I'm not paying attention. I need to read the
Bible. If I read it with prayer that the Holy
Spirit will open my eyes to this need, I soon
remember things done that ought not to have been
done and things undone that ought to have been
done.

Sometimes I follow confession of sin with
confession of faith--that is, with a declaration
of what I believe. Any one of the creeds helps
here, or these simple words: "Christ has died;
Christ is risen; Christ will come again. Lord, I
believe; help my unbelief."

Then comes intercession, the hardest work in the
world--the giving of one's self, time, strength,
energy, and attention to the needs of others in a
way that no one but God sees, no one but God will
do anything about, and no one but God will ever
reward you for.

Do you know what to pray for people whom you
haven't heard from in a long time? I don't. So I
often use the prayers of the New Testament, so
all-encompassing, so directed toward things of
true and eternal importance, such as Paul's for
the Christians in Ephesus: ''…I pray that you,
rooted and founded in love yourselves, may be
able to grasp…how wide and long and deep and high
is the love of Christ" (Ephesians 3:17, 18). Or I
use his prayer for the Colossians, "We pray that
you will be strengthened from God's boundless
resources, so that you will find yourselves able
to pass through any experience and endure it with
joy" (Colossians 1:11). I have included many New
Testament prayers in a small booklet entitled And
When You Pray (Good News Publishers).

My own devotional life is very far from being
Exhibit A of what it should be. I have tried,
throughout most of my life, to maintain a quiet
time with God, with many lapses and failures.
Occasionally, but only occasionally, it is
impossible. Our Heavenly Father knows all about
those occasions. He understands perfectly why
mothers with small children bring them along when
they talk to him.

Nearly always it is possible for most of us, with
effort and planning and the will to do his will,
to set aside time for God alone. I am sure I have
lost out spiritually when I have missed that
time. And I can say with the psalmist, "I have
found more joy along the path of thy instruction
than in any kind of wealth" (Psalms 119:14).



Copyright© 1989, by Elisabeth Elliot
all rights reserved.