God is the Source of All Good

Today, for the letter "G", I'd like to quote a vignette from a book, The Valley of Vision, a collection of Puritan Prayers. I thought abut God, Grace, and His Glory, and finally landed on this, God as the Source of All Good.

O Lord God, Who inhabitest eternity,

The heavens declare thy glory,

The earth thy riches,

The universe is thy temple;

Thy presence fills immensity,

Yet thou hast of thy pleasure created life,

and communicated happiness;

Thou hast made me what I am,

and given me what I have;

In thee I live and move and have my being;

Thy providence has set the bounds of my habitation,

and wisely administers all my affairs.

I thank thee for thy riches to me in Jesus,

for the unclouded revelation of him in thy Word,

where I behold his Person, character, grace, glory,

humiliation, sufferings, death, and resurrection.

Give me to feel a need of his continual saviorhood,

and cry with Job, "I am vile",

with Peter, "I perish",

with the publican, "Be merciful to me, a sinner."

Subdue in me the love of sin,

Let me know the need of renovation as well as of forgiveness,

in order to serve and enjoy thee for ever.

I come to thee in the all-prevailing name of Jesus,

with nothing of my own to plead,

no works, no worthiness, no promises.

I am often straying,

often knowingly opposing thy authority,

often abusing thy goodness;

Much of my guilt arises from my religious privileges,

my low estimation of them,

my failure to use them to my advantage,

But I am not careless of thy favour

or regardless of thy glory'

Impress me deeply with a sense of thine omnipresence,

that thou art about my path,

my ways, my lying down, my end.