Each year the Synod appoints a day of humiliation and prayer to be held throughout the Church to confess our sins and to seek an outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon our congregations. By the very fact that such a day is appointed yearly for this purpose, we may be ready to take it for granted and not view it and the duties of the day in the way which we ought to do. It is not a matter to be taken up lightly or engaged in without serious thought. What is done is done before Him who is the Searcher of the hearts and the Trier of the reins of the children of men. He takes no pleasure in the sacrifice of fools but says in His own Word: “Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than to give the sacrifice of fools: for they consider not that they do evil”.
It is certain that it was in no light way that Daniel in his day approached God in confession and supplication, with fasting, and sackcloth and ashes. He addressed the Lord as “the great and dreadful God, keeping the covenant and mercy to them that love him, and to them that keep his commandments.” Before the great God of eternity he made an open confession of sin saying, “We have sinned, and have committed iniquity, and have done wickedly, and have rebelled, even by departing from Thy precepts and from Thy judgments.” He confessed, too, their refusal to give ear to the prophets, the servants of the Lord. Like David, he acknowledged the Lord to be righteous but to them belonged confusion of face.
When he comes to plead for this people whose sins he confessed, with what strong crying and tears he makes his plea. “O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord, hearken and do; defer not, for thine own sake, O my God; for Thy city and Thy people are called by Thy name”.
And in the light of our many sins and our multiplied provocations, is it not such a confession and such supplications that we need in drawing nigh to God on a day set apart for confession of sin and for humiliation before Him? What need we have to this end of the Spirit of grace and of supplications for it is Spirit-indited prayer that will reach up to heaven and will bring an answer in peace.
The sacrifice we need most of all in going up to the house of God to confess our sins is the sacrifice of a broken spirit. The Psalmist who had learned to confess sin with deep contrition of heart acknowledged this. He says: “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise”. If the Lord were pleased to pour out His Spirit upon us in repentance on the day set apart as the day of humiliation and prayer, each congregation of the Church would become a Bochim indeed. What fruit of blessing this would bring, not only to our own souls, or to us as a Church alone, but also to the Church at large. Let us seek then at God’s hand that it may prove a day long to be remembered in the congregations of His people.