Weekday Devotion With Pastor Chris

I suspect that Horatius (Horace to his friends) Bonar is not a familiar name to most of you, but in his time he was a well-known, well-respected pastor, author and hymnodist.  He wrote some 140 hymns, three of which can still be found in our Presbyterian hymnal today.

     Bonar came from a long line of ministers who served a total of 364 years in the Church of Scotland.  I wonder if that might be some kind of record for any family.  Born in 1808, he grew up in Edinburgh, and graduated from Edinburgh University. He was ordained in the Church of Scotland, but during what is referred to as “the disruption,” he joined the Free Church of Scotland in 1843, and became its Moderator forty years later.  He died in 1888.

     Bonar and his wife knew some great sadness over the course of their life together.  They lost five young children in succession, and towards the end of their lives saw one of their four surviving children widowed, and was forced to move back in with them along with her five small children.  Bonar’s faith, however, never wavered.  He continued to write and offer God his best up to the end of his life.

     It is not one of Bonar’s hymns that I want to share with you this morning, but one of his prayers.  I came across it in my own devotions.  The language is a bit archaic, but I hope you can get past that and see the great heart reflected here.  Even more, I hope you can make this prayer your own.

Oh, turn me, mold me, mellow me for use!
Pervade my being with Thy vital force,    
That this else inexpressive life of mine
May become eloquent and full of power,
Impregnated with life and strength divine…
I cannot raise the dead, nor from this soil
Pluck precious dust, nor bid the sleepers wake,
Nor still the storm, nor bend the lightning back,
Nor muffle up the thunder,
Nor bind the Evil One, nor bid the chain
Fall from creation’s long-enfettered limbs;
But I can live a life that tells on other lives, and makes
This world less full of evil and of pain –
A life, which like a pebble dropped at sea,
Sends its wide circles to a hundred shores.
Let such be mine!  Creator of true life!
Thyself the life Thou givest, give Thyself,
That Thou mayst dwell in me, and I in Thee.
Amen.

"Abide in me as I abide in you.  Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.  I am the vine, you are the branches.  Those  who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing." (John 15:4-5)