On Getting What We Ask For…

No doubt we have all observed children who insist on having something they see right now—something they have their hearts set upon. 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 of life that must be learned—patience and a sound sense of values; patience and an awareness that there are some things that won’t matter so much tomorrow as they seem to matter today.

Perhaps all of us at times set our hearts upon things that later don’t seem to matter too much—and forget some things that matter much more. There is evidence, as we move through life, of a shifting sense of values. A child plays with a toy for awhile—a toy he thought he had to have to be happy—and 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 of the things we feel we have to have, aren’t in perspective, what they seemed to be, 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.

It was Paul who wrote “for we know not what we should pray for.”³³ Often we know not what we should want; we know not what we should ask for, what we should give our lives to, and often when we get what we thought we wanted we learn that is wasn’t really what we should have wanted, but somehow we couldn’t see it sooner.

Life here moves quickly, and with all of its promises, and pleasures, and possibilities, these swiftly moving days are but the brief prelude to limitless and everlasting opportunities that lie beyond. With all our reaching, with all our wanting, with all our using of time, with all our running deep into debt, we would well remember not to overreach ourselves, not to let our heart become too set on things which, if we had them, would not assure our happiness—and which might make us miss the things that endure, the timeless things, the things that matter most.