| The Hidden Life |
Chapter 7 |
Page 5 |
There is yet another class of prayers which appear to be unanswered, but whose answer is only delayed for wise reasons. Ofttimes we are not able at the moment to receive the things we ask for. A child in one of the lower grades in a school may go to a teacher of higher studies, and ask to be taught this or that branch. The teacher may be willing to impart to the pupil the knowledge of the higher study, but the pupil cannot receive the knowledge until he has gone through certain other studies to prepare him for it. There are spiritual qualities for which we may pray earnestly, but which can be received only after certain disciple. A ripened character cannot be gotten by a young Christian merely in answer to prayer; it can be gotten only through long experience.
Or it may be that the things we pray for cannot be given to us until they have been prepared for us. Suppose you were to plant a young fruit-tree, and were to begin to pray for fruit from its branches; could your prayer be answered at once? It is thus with many things we ask for in our pleading, — they must be grown before they can be given to us. God delays to answer, that he may give us in the end better things than could have been given at the beginning. He seems silent to us when we plead; but it is not the silence of indifference, nor the silence of refusal, but the silence of love, that really assents to our request, and sets about preparing for us the blessings we crave. We need only patience to wait our Father’s time.
Here it is that ofttimes we fail. We cannot wait for God. We think he is indifferent to us because he does not instantly give us what we crave. We fret and vex ourselves over the unanswering of the very prayers which God is really answering as speedily as the blessings can be made ready for us, or as we can be made ready to receive them. We should teach ourselves to trust our Father in all that concerns our prayers, — what he will give, what he shall withhold, and the time and the manner of his giving.
These are suggestions concerning what seem to be unanswered prayers. The prayers may have been answered in ways in which we did not recognize our requests. They may be, indeed, unanswered, because to answer them would have been unkindness to us, or would have wrought hurt to others. Or the answers may have been delayed until we are made ready to receive them, or while God is preparing them for us.
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