Almost two weeks ago I decided to add a new Endeavor for 2014: read the collected works of Thomas Boston. It was a “go big or go home” Endeavor and I wanted to go big. But now I am going home.

Just yesterday said, “Uncle,” to the great Scotsman.

My reasoning for laying aside the Boston endeavor is quite simple. To read through the twelve volumes in eleven months would mean reading about thirty-five pages a day. If I’m reading fast, those pages would occupy about forty minutes of each day. I spent about ten days attacking the first volume with verve and nearly knocked out the whole thing. But it didn’t take long to realize that this one Endeavor was going to rob time from the other three Endeavors, while also infringing on my afternoon prayers.

Right as I was thinking about laying Boston aside in order to protect prayer time in the afternoon I read this part of Spurgeon’s magnificent lecture on “Earnestness: Its Marring and Maintenance“:

Fan [earnestness] with much supplication. We cannot be too urgent with one another upon this point: no language can be too vehement with which to implore ministers to pray. There is for our brethren and ourselves an absolute necessity for prayer. Necessity!–I hardly like to talk of that, let me rather speak of the deliciousness of prayer–the wondrous sweetness and divine felicity which come to the soul that lives in the atmosphere of prayer. John Fox said, “The time we spend with God in secret is the sweetest time, and the best improved. Therefore, if thou lovest thy life, be in love with prayer.” The devout Mr. Hervey resolved on the bed of sickness–“If God shall spare my life, I will read less and pray more.”

I often think about dying and what I would say on my deathbed. The older I get the more I realize how likely it could be that I would say the same thing as good Mr. Hervey.

And I don’t want to.

So I put Boston back on his venerable shelf in my study and sat down to pray. I think the good Scotsman would commend that endeavor.

A prayerful journey through Boston is still, very much, in the cards . . . just not in 2014.