Morning prayer

Whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. So many readings from 1 John this morning. Spurred me to repeat prayers for the saints I knew who miss this part of Holy Scripture in their loyalty to Sonship theology. It was also a private blessing from the Lord I rose early to meet. I had promised Him with a full heart the night before that I would go ahead and get up to spend time in His fellowship whenever I woke. Of course it was hard. I am more sleepy because of this cold. But His love constrained me. And how He blessed me.

I went on to flip through my old Trinity hymnal to find a hymn that was playing way at the edge of my mind--I knew I'd find it in the section on the Church. And as I looked through the hymns that I love so well about the Church I passed them to find this sweet one by Philip Doddridge

Fountain of good, to own Thy love, Our thankful hearts incline;
What can we render, Lord, to Thee, When all the worlds are Thine?
But Thou hast needy brethren here, Partakers of Thy grace,
Whose names Thou wilt Thyself confess Before the Father’s face.
And in their accents of distress Thy pleading voice is heard;
In them Thou may’st be clothed and fed And visited and cheered.
Thy face with rev’rence and with love We in Thy poor would see;
O may we minister to them, And in them, Lord, to Thee.

I have a book of hymn stories close by so I read about Philip Doddridge. He was the 20th child of a woman who lost eighteen of her previous children in infancy. She raised him in the Word. A timely answer to prayer caused him to resolve to live a life of prayer, training himself to pray without ceasing, "even while getting washed and dressed in the morning." What a dear note to me as I do the same this morning. I hope to spend the morning reading what hymns I have of his 400 posthumously published hymns.