Of Prayer
There once lived an old man who was a carpenter. One day, he was building some crates for clothes that his church was sending to an orphanage in China. After completing the work, on his way home, he reached into his pocket to find his glasses and realized he could not find them.
He tried to remember where he could have left them, but he realized that the glasses may have slipped out of his pocket unnoticed and fallen into one of the crates he had nailed shut and sent out! His brand-new glasses were heading for China!
The old man had spent $20 to buy those glasses that very morning and the thought of buying another pair upset him. He didn’t have much money to spare, and in frustration, he said, “It’s not fair God! I have been faithful in giving of my time and money to your work and now this?”
Several months later, the director of the orphanage was on furlough in the US and decided to visit all the churches that supported him in China. On one Sunday, he came to speak at the old man’s church in Chicago. He began by thanking the people for their support in cash and kind.
Then he said, “But most of all, I must thank you for that pair of glasses you sent me last year. You see, a storm had just swept through the orphanage, destroying everything including my glasses. I could not see well and I had been experiencing headaches daily. My co-workers and I were in much prayer about this. On the day your crates arrived, we found a pair of glasses lying on top of the items in the first crate. When I tried them on, it was as though they had been custom-made just for me! Thank you all so much for that gift.”
The people in the congregation were happy for his answered prayer, but they thought he must have mixed up their gifts with another church’s gifts. They had not included any glasses in the list of items they sent.
However, quietly sitting at the back, tears streaming down his face, the old carpenter had just realized that the Master Carpenter had used him in an extraordinary way.
In Kahlil Gibran’s poem – On Prayer, he writes: “When you pray you rise to meet in the air those who are praying at that very hour, and whom save in prayer you may not meet.”
What is your prayer today? Who’s answer to prayer are you being today? Whom are you meeting as you make your supplication today? Or are you too busy to say a prayer? Consider the wisdom of great men and women who have gone before us who prayed, not so much for their needs, but as an admission of their knowledge that they did not spin the world. Someone greater exists and he hears us when we call. Call.
“Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi
“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change
the nature of the one who prays.”
~ Soren Kierkegaard
“Prayer is not asking. Prayer is putting oneself in the hands of God, at His disposition, and listening to His voice in the depth of our hearts.” ~ Mother Teresa
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