What should we have felt and said that day at Bethany if, after raising Lazarus, He had turned to us and made Himself our listener, placing Himself, as was His wont, at the complete disposal of the one who wanted Him? Should we have felt shy of trying to interest Him in the details of our life, in our little joys and troubles? Or would our hearts have opened out to Him, and simply emptied themselves in His presence? Do we want an ideal visit to Christ? Let us seek it in Nicodemus’ talks by night; in the centurion’s urgent pleading for his servant; in the unburdening of soul that we see in Zaccheus and in the sisters at Bethany. And let us frame our own visits on such models. If a big worry threatens to invade prayer, why not take it straight away into prayer, giving it the place and time it wants, making it the subject-matter of our intercourse with God, and so turning a hindrance into a help! Of course we must do all this with reverence and a certain amount of watchfulness, or our prayer will be no prayer at all, but distraction pure and simple. But if we put our case before our Lord and talk it over with Him, representing our difficulty, asking His advice, listening to His whispered word in answer, our time of prayer will be what He wants it to be--a time of rest, and light, and strength. Some may say that this so-called prayer is very unsupernatural, and that the results of such a compromise between prayer and distraction will not be very satisfactory. It may be so; we can only reply that there are times without number when this is the only method of getting results at all, and that our Lord’s method of dealing with His own and theirs with Him was _eminently natural_. No, surely, our difficulty is not due to want of sympathy on the part of Christ our Lord. It can only come from our failing to recognise the full purpose of the Incarnation and its bearing on every detail of human life. Had His act of Redemption been His one motive in coming amongst us, He might have come straight from His throne at the right hand of the Father to the cross on Calvary. But the proof of love greater than which no man can give did not satisfy Him. He wanted as “First-born amongst many brethren,”[31] as Head of the human family, to place Himself in intimate communication with it on every side, to touch as far as might be every point, every experience of human life, entering personally into its mysteries of joy, and fear, and love, and sorrow. And so we have the years of infancy and childhood and youth, and--precious above all--the blessed years of the public life, when “the Lord Jesus came in and went out among us,”[32] proving by every word and act His desire to be associated with us His brethren, His right to His name of predilection--_the Son of Man_.