ALMIGHTY, and merciful God, of
whoſe only gift it cometh that thy faithful
people do unto thee true and laudable
ſervice:
Grant, we beſeech thee, that we may
ſo faithfully
ſerve thee in this life, that we fail not finally to attain thy heavenly promiſes, through
the merits of Jeſus Chriſt our Lord. Amen.
Keynote: Fidelity and Understanding
Two things are needed for God's service: one is an unfaltering fidelity, and the other is a right understanding of what is required of us.
If we look back through history, we see many examples of an unfaltering fidelity to God's service which to us seem to go hand in hand with a misunderstanding of God's requirements of us. We cannot now believe that God would require us to massacre the little children of those who believed wrongly, yet men have been found, not once but many times, to do this in a spirit of unfaltering fidelity.
How are we to avoid making like errors? How are we to judge righteous judgement? We cannot do it by the light of human reason and expediency; we must be able to stand outside our mundane problems if we are to see in them their spiritual significance and judge them accordingly.
It is only by God's grace that we can hope to do this. And what is that grace? It is the uplifting of heart that comes when we lift up our eyes to the highest ideal we can conceive - the life of Jesus of Nazareth. He is the friend of the heart Whose influence changes our outlook. When we have been alone with Him for a little while, we find that we are judging very differently to the way we judged when we were in the midst of our problems. Guided by the divine counsellor, we shall know how to do God true and laudable service, and shall not be misled by our human errors, fears, and prejudices.
[Dion Fortune, Mystical Meditations on the Christian Collects]
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