On Getting What We Ask For…

We have all seen children who impatiently insist on having something they want – right now.

And for the moment life seems very unhappy if they can’t have, right now, what they want. But patience

is one of the lessons that must be learned – patience and a sound sense of values; patience to learn that

there are some things that won’t matter so much tomorrow as they seem to matter today. Perhaps all

of us have set our hearts on having things that later don’t seem to matter very much – and overlook

some things that matter much more. There is evidence, as we live life, of a shifting sense of values. A

child plays for awhile with a toy – a toy he thought he had to have to be happy – and he then tires of it

and tosses it aside and turns his attention to something else which in turn is also tossed aside. And in

this the child is not so different from adults. Some of the things we insist upon, some things we feel we

have to have, aren’t what they once seemed to be as we look back, and sometimes some of the most

sobering lessons of life are the lessons we learn when we get what we ask for, when we get what we

insist we have to have to be happy. “For we know not what we should pray for,” said Paul Often we

know not what we should want; we know not what we should ask for, what we should use our lives for,

and often when we get what we thought we wanted we learn that it wasn’t really what we should have

wanted, but somehow we couldn’t see this sooner. Life here goes quickly, with all of its promises, and

pleasures, and possibilities, but these swiftly moving days are only the prelude to the limitless and

everlasting possibilities that lie beyond. With all our reaching, with all our wanting, with all our running

deeply into debt, we would well remember not to overreach ourselves, not to let our hearts become too

set on things which, even if we had them, would not assure our happiness – and yet might make us miss

the things that matter most.