| Finding the Way |
Chapter 3 |
Page 5 |
A child may indolently shrink from the study, the regular hours, the routine, the tasks and drudgery and discipline of the school, and beg the parent to let him stay at home and have an easy time. But what would you think of the father who would weakly grant the child’s request, releasing him from the tasks that irk him so? And is God less wisely kind than our human fathers? He will not answer prayers which ask that we may be freed from duty, from work, from struggle, since it is by these very things alone that we can grow. The only true answer to such prayers is the withholding of what we ask.
A man and his wife were talking together, and this scrap of their conversation was overheard: “I could make a good living,” said the man, “yes, more than a good living, by continuing to paint the sort of trash I’ve been painting all summer.”
“Yes,” said the woman, looking at him proudly, “but I want my husband to live up to his best. I would live in a garret, on a crust, cheerfully, to help him do it.”
That is the way God would have us live, so as to make the best of our life. When we pray for help to live easily and not up to our loftiest reaches of attainment and achievement, God will be silent to our request. He would not be our wise and loving Father if He treated such request differently.
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