Prayer and Repentance - Phillip Vo

“My words fly up, my thoughts remain below;

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.”

Oh the simplistic jab Shakespeare is making here.

Quite obviously, the king is very much in the wrong for what he has done to Hamlet’s father. The issue is a few lines before, that his “stubborn knees” will not bend down in repentance before God.

Repentance is simultaneously an ugly and beautiful thing. All within a singular moment, we are brought low in confession of our sin, sin that puts us in a “wretched state” making us “black as death” and we are also relying on God to free us from the shame and guilt of that sin, which we cannot do on our own.

However, that doesn’t necessarily free us from the physical consequence of our sin (perhaps, someone behind you who is about to gut you open with a sword while you hurl empty words to the God of the universe. 

Prayer without true meaning and thought mean nothing to God, and he is not pleased by it. 

In the same way, repentance is not truly repentance without a change in action now. 

Taking the wife of the guy you killed is the complete opposite of repentance.

How often do we sin and haphazardly pray for God to forgive us? When are we truly broken over our wrongs, and when do we act to fight against committing them again?

How many of us live like the king when we think we’re hamlet?

I commented on Hannah Schofield's and Anna Grace Gay's