With perfect consistency of mind, help me to receive all manner of events. For we know not what to ask, and we cannot ask for one event rather than another without presumption. We cannot desire a specific action without presuming to be a judge, and assuming responsibility for what in Your wisdom You may hide from me. O Lord, I know only one thing, and that it is good to follow you and wicked to offend you. Beyond this, I do not know what is good for me, whether health or sickness, riches or poverty, or anything else in this world. This knowledge surpasses both the wisdom of men and of angels. It lies hidden in the secrets of Your rovidence, which I adore, and will not dare to try to pry open.
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) – mathematician, physicist, philosopher, theologian
I cannot overstate how impacting this prayer has been to me. It was one of the first written prayers I discovered which profoundly affected me, and it continues to challenge my understanding of how I should pray.
Pascal begins by asking God to make him indifferent to the circumstances he encounters. To paraphrase, “Help me to accept all types of things that come my way with an unchanging consistency of trust and acceptance.”
How can he say this? Shouldn’t we be happy when good things happen to us? Or be upset when bad things come our way? Shouldn’t we pray for God to give us the good things and protect us from the bad?
Pascal had figured out something that we, as self-sufficient moderns, tend to reject. As shocking as it sounds to our ears, he actually seems to be saying that he accepts that he may not be the ultimate judge of what is best for him. His prayer is to learn to so completely trust God’s perfect wisdom and love that anything that God sends his way, he will accept with inner peace and calm.
He confesses that he is too uninformed of God’s purposes to know how to pray. He seems to be saying, “If I ask for health, I am assuming that health is the best thing for me. If I pray for protection, I presume to think that protection is in my best interest. But God may have plans for me – better plans than I can imagine – that can only be attained as I grow through my pain or my suffering.”
In fact, when we tell God what it is we want him to do, we are judging through our filters what is good and what is bad, and we are bold enough to presume that our filters are the same as God’s. But Pascal has come to the conclusion that he doesn’t know enough about what, ultimately, is in his own best interest to judge or pray wisely. And, it is only with this realization that he comes to a place of total surrender and peace with whatever God does in him or to him.
“I do not know what is good for me, whether health or sickness, riches or poverty, or anything else in this world. This knowledge surpasses both the wisdom of men and of angels. It lies hidden in the secrets of Your providence, which I adore, and will not dare to try to pry open.”
How many times have I figured out for God what he should do for me or for others? How many times have I been upset because he didn’t conform to the plans I had laid out, or with my solution to a problem?
Can I learn to trust that God judges what is good for me with a knowledge that is deeper and more trustworthy than my own? Or will I continue to mope about and nurse a bitter spirit because he didn’t give me what I think I need or deserve?
Can I agree with Pascal that the only good thing I can know with any certainty is that it is truly good to follow, serve and trust God? That it is “good to follow you and wicked to offend you”?
Can I learn to stop trying to impose my expectations upon God and just surrender to his providence and his wisdom? Through this prayer, I am beginning to get a clearer vision of what true surrender and trust looks like.
May it bless you as it has blessed me. Shalom.
That is beautiful. It reminds me of a time that the Lord ministered to me. I thought I had heard from the Lord, that something would happen that never did. I was led to Matt 11, when John the Baptist is asking Jesus, are you the One? And that question was born out his not understanding why he was in prison and the promises of a conquering Messiah and King not being fulfilled, as HE interpreted it. And in verse 6 Jesus says, ” And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me.” I find that I keep getting brought back to places where I am asked ‘ Am I your Lord, and do you trust me?’ I thank the Lord for what He has put on your heart, and you being moved to share.