John Knox

There was bad blood between Protestants and Catholics in the 16th century.  Protestant John Knox (1514-1572) was a galley slave for 19 months on a French ship.  During the celebration of Mass on board ship, every slave was required to show veneration to a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary.  When Knox was told to kiss the feet of the painted statue, he refused, threw it overboard and said, “Let our lady now save herself; she is light enough.  Let her learn to swim.” Not exactly a high-water mark in Catholic-Protestant relations.  After his release, Knox went on to lead the Protestant Reformation in Scotland.  His well-known prayer, “Give me Scotland or I die” expressed his missionary fervor.  Mary, Queen of Scots said of him, “I fear his prayers more than I do the armies of Europe.” His quote, “One man with God is always in a majority” epitomized the way he lived.  While there is much to write about this colorful and fiery reformer, I’ll limit myself to something he wrote about prayer.  He composed A Treatise on Prayer in 1553 to answer three essential questions: what is true prayer, how shall we pray, and for what should we pray?  In answer to his first question, he wrote that true prayer is “an earnest and familiar talking with God, to whom we declare our miseries, whose help and support we implore and desire in our adversities and whom we laud and praise for our benefits received.”  In a single sentence, Knox described three benefits of prayer: 1. We have the privilege of an audience with God–“an earnest and familiar talking with God.”  2. We can receive from God–“to whom we can declare our miseries…and our adversities.” 3. We can give thanks and praise to God–“for our benefits received.”  His description of prayer as “an earnest and familiar talking with God” may be the best one-sentence description of prayer I’ve come across.  A sample prayer from his Collection of Prayers follows here: