And a great word breaks out like the bursting of a flood of sunlight out of dark clouds,—­joy.  He had used it that evening before in the upper room, and again along the road.  Now it flashes out again.  This reveals the meaning of that good-cheer and overcome with which the roadway talk closed.  With the clouds of hate at their blackest, and the storm just about to break in uncontrolled wild fury, He speaks of “My joy.”  He is singing.  In the thick of hatred and plotting here’s the bit of music, in the major key, rippling out.  Such a spirit cannot be defeated.  Joy is faith singing in the storm because it sees already the clearing light beyond.

And so He prays on, touching the same keys of the musical instrument of His heart, back and forth, yet ever advancing in the theme.  Now He broadens out, in clear vision, beyond the gathering storm, to those, through all the earth, and down the centuries, who would believe through these men who are listening.  What a sweep of faith.  That singing cleared His vision.

And then He sees them all, of many races and languages and radical differences, all blended into one body of earnest loving believers drawn by the one vision of Himself back in the glory of the Father’s presence, where they will all gather.  And then love ties the knot on the end.  A personal love ties together Father and Son and—­us, who humbly give the glad homage of our hearts.

Right in the very midst of the prayer lies that innermost heart of which I spoke a moment ago.  It is in verse ten.  Jesus says, “All things that are Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine.”  There lies the very inner heart of all carried to the last degree. There is glad giving and full taking; surrender and appropriation.  He who gives all may reach in and take all.  Here is, humanly, the secret of Jesus’ stupendous character and career.

And it is the same for the humblest of us.  The road is no different.  We may say, by His great grace, in the insistence of our sovereign wills, “All that is mine is Thine:  I give it Thee.  I give it back to Thee:  I use all the strength of my will in yielding all to Thee, and in doing it habitually.”

Then we can say, with greatest reverence and humility and yet bold confidence, “All that is Thine is mine.” Yet being mine it is Thine.  Still being Thine it is mine.  So comes the perfection of the rhythmic action of love.  Our love gives our all to Him.  And then takes the greater all of His—­no, not from Him, for Him, held in trust, used for Him, while we keep knees and face close to the ground, lest we stumble and slip and worse.

So the prayer closes.  And if we might go back over it, alone in secret, prayerfully, quietly thinking thoughtfully into it, until this great simple prayer gets its hold upon our hearts.  And then gradually it would come to us that so He is now praying for us, you and me.