Receiving something better

"Lord, give us this bread always!" (John 6:34)

That was a good prayer. It is just the prayer for each one of us—every day! But the people who made it first, did not know what they were asking.

It is often so in our praying. We have a dim, glimmering vision of something very beautiful—but it is only a shadowy vision to us. The thing we think we want, is not the thing at all that God had in mind in His promise. He meant something most worthy—but we have in our mind the thought of something material and earthly.

It is well that we have an Intercessor into whose hands all our requests must pass, who will take our poor, mistaken prayers—and interpret them aright for us, giving us, not what we thought we would get—but something better, diviner!

Abraham sought all his life, for a country which he never received. But he got something better in his unavailing search—his faith was growing all the while; his thoughts and hopes were turned to spiritual things, of which the earthly possessions he sought were only shadows.

So it is in the disappointments of our praying: what we seek—we find not—but meanwhile we are getting blessings a thousand times better.

On weary paths of earth where we toil in search of supposed blessings, we are really rising step by step on invisible stairs, and reaching blessings of which the earthly illusions were only pictures.

J.M.