December 26 – Oh, To Pour Out Our Hearts

Hope for Today: A Daily Devotion from Reasons for Hope*Jesus

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“Pour out your heart before …God.” Psalm 62:8

What a different view does this lively text give of praying, when opposed to the usual expression of saying our prayers — saying what our books or our parents teach us, or what we have been long used to say in a formal and customary manner!

To pour out our hearts is like emptying a vessel of all its contents so that nothing remains. And what a pleasing, awesome, important thing must this be! Whatever is in my heart — my guilt or fears, my sins or sorrows, my cares and crosses, my wants, dangers, weaknesses, temptations, darkness, and ignorance, my doubts and anxieties respecting both body and soul, myself and others, the Church and the world, every thought that arises relating either to past, present, or future — I have leave to empty myself of untill not one burden remains. And this not by myself or before men (for what help can I get from either?) but before God, who is a prayer-hearing God, both able and willing to relieve, and who will not turn away from His creatures when they pour out their hearts before Him. Instead, God will fill them with His consolations, which are neither few nor small.

He can send a Hannah away no longer sad.
He can say, “Son or daughter, be of good cheer, your sins are forgiven you.”
And He can send an instructor to an inquiring Cornelius, to inform him what he must do.

No wonder then that real prayer is such a cordial, when it is made before Him who is a refuge for us. O for the Spirit of grace and supplication!

Devotion by Karl Heinrich von Bogatzky (1690—1774)