Charles Henry Brent (1862-1929) was given two hard assignments in ministry as an Episcopal priest. First, the bishop sent him to reopen an abandoned church in the poorest section of Boston’s South End. After he successfully revitalized the church, his second difficult appointment was to become the first Episcopal missionary to the Philippines. He received word of his election to this assignment by telegram and had to consult an atlas to identify the Philippines on a map. He devoted seventeen years to helping American military personnel and government officials, many of whom were Episcopalian, to be guided by Christian principles and to reach people on the islands who were “virtually untouched” by the gospel. While in the Philippines, Charles wrote With God in Prayer in 1909. He challenged readers “to place your pet opinions and prejudices before God. He will surprise you by showing you that the best of them need refining and some the purification of destruction.” He observed, “God is more ready to hear than we are to pray, more eager to give than we are to receive, more active to find us than we are to find him.” One sentence caught my attention, “Pray hardest when it is hardest to pray.”
One of Charles’s meditations, “Forgetting and Remembering,” reflects on Paul’s admonition in Philippians, “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead” (Phil. 3.13). He observes our natural inclination is to do the opposite—to remember the things behind us and to forget what is set before us. God invites us to forget the things that are behind and place the future into his hands. Having placed them there, we can leave them with God. God will keep his hand on them and prevent them from injuring us. Because He remembers them, we can afford to forget them.
In his writing about prayer, Charles offered brief, single-sentence prayers that follow a three-part format. First, he addresses God (often by specifically naming a quality of God relevant to the petition). Second, he makes his petition, and third, he concludes with a meditation on Christ. One such prayer follows here: