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Thursday, August 16, 2007

Thoughts on Prayer

With my new blog venture One Came Back I've been thinking a lot about prayer lately. How we are told that if we ask we will receive, yet sometimes the answer is 'no'. That we can pray to God for what we want - but that what we want should be for his 'will to be done'.

So - we can ask for what we want - and we might get it? Is this what we're told?

Then I thought of it as an analogy of a child asking a parent for something.

Let's say that a child (let's call her Betsy) wants a pony. Betsy asks her father for the pony (that's like us asking God for something). Betsy really, really, really wants this pony. She has pictures of horses all over her room. She promises that she will love and care for this pony.

But Betsy's father realizes that an apartment in the city is not the ideal place for raising a pony. And he has to tell her no.

Betsy did not get what she wants. Why didn't she get what she wants? Because it wouldn't have been a good idea. Her father (our Father in heaven) could see that, even if she couldn't.

S0 - if God knows what we need - why doesn't he just give it to us - why do we have to ask.

Well - everyone likes to be asked.

And going back to Betsy for a minute. Perhaps Betsy would really like to go to summer camp. She read articles about summer camp and has friends who went to summer camp. She thinks it would be fun. Betsy's father also thinks summer camp would be good for her. He thinks she's learn new things and make new friends. But he's worried that she would be homesick, and since she's never mentioned going to summer camp, he doesn't bring it up either. So, in the end - Betsy does not go to summer camp.

In this case - if she had asked, she would have received.

It's not a perfect analogy, I know. But it helped me to better understand a little why some prayers seem to be answered, and some are not.

God listens to our prayers, and he answers them with wisdom - even if we can't understand.

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