One day many years ago, as I was driving home from town with one of our sons, he kept urging me to hurry. “Go faster, Mother!” he insisted. But he was too young to read the road sign that said 45 mph.

And again, “Pass him, Mother.” But he was too small to see that there was a double yellow line.

Then I began applying the brake. “Why are you stopping?” he demanded.
“There’s a school bus ahead that has stopped,” I replied.

I thought to myself, When God is at the wheel, we may request–but never insist. We are too young to read certain signs, too small to see what lies ahead.

George MacDonald writes, “There is a communion with God that asks for nothing, yet asks for everything. … He who seeks the Father more than anything he can give, is likely to have what he asks, for he is not likely to ask amiss.”

There may be a long interval between these two clauses from John 16:24: “ask, and ye shall receive” and “that your joy may be full” (KJV). But the end of true prayer is always joy.

Taken by permission from “Growing in Prayer,” by Ruth Bell Graham, Decision magazine, May 1974, ©1974 The Ruth Graham Literary Trust.