I USED to live near a coal mine where many men were employed and also a few boys.
One afternoon at quitting time the men ascended the shaft, expecting the boys to follow. But, suddenly, before the boys finished work, there was a cave-in; a flood of water began pouring in and shut off the only passage by which the boys could get out.
Oh how dreadful was their case, as they watched the water rise higher and higher.
A great crowd gathered at the mouth of the pit. The miners immediately began pumping operations, but it would take days to pump out so much water, and they had little hope of reaching the boys alive.
It was Wednesday morning I was told that by the next day they expected the boys would be found. I thought what a solemn thing it was for those five boys, shut up in a mine, to be called away from time into eternity and perhaps unprepared to meet God.
Just then I heard footsteps and a boy’s voice cried out, “Mother! Mother! They’re all alive.” I went out and joined the crowd who were expressing their joy that the boys were all safe and sound.
After they were brought out and restored to their loved ones, the boys told how they felt while they were thus imprisoned. What did they do in that dark pit? “The water is rising,” said one in despair. “What shall we do now?”
“Let us go and pray,” answered some of the rest, and as well as they could they did so. “And then,” said one, “the water began to go down.”
Then they prayed that they might be delivered from the bad and poisonous air which often fills a mine at such a time. This prayer was answered too, for God caused a mass of coal and clay to fall which stopped up the passage and prevented the poisonous air from reaching the boys.
One father asked his boy what he said in his prayer. He replied: “I said, ‘Lord, Thou knowest how bad it is to go to work in the morning in health and strength and then to be carried home dead.’" And then, remembrance of what he had gone through overcame the poor boy, and he could say no more, his eyes filled up with tears.
Scripture says, “Prepare to meet thy God.” Amos 4:1212Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel: and because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel. (Amos 4:12). God is sovereign in His mercy and does answer prayer. But He would have us to learn, first of all, that we can only approach Him as sinners, that we need a sacrifice for our sins, and the only sacrifice that He will accept is the Lord Jesus who died on the cross. When we come to Him in this way, owning His beloved Son as our Saviour, then God is all for us—all that He is in His love, His mercy, and His power.
“If God be for us, who can be against us?” Rom. 8:3131What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? (Romans 8:31). True prayer then is coming to God in faith and telling Him all you feel and all you want in the simplest words.
ML-07/30/1972