What thing good Pray’d for, but often proves our woe, our bane?  I prayed for children and thought barrenness In wedlock a reproach; I gain’d a son And such a son as all men hail’d me happy.  Who would be now a father in my stead?  Oh, wherefore did God grant me my request, And as a blessing with such pomp adorn’d Why are His gifts desirable, to tempt Our earnest prayers, then giv’n with solemn hand As graces, draw a scorpion’s tail behind?

Such, I say, may be our first thoughts; but when the first bitterness and bewilderment of disappointment are over, when reason and right feeling begin to dominate, we own that the whole history of our prayer and its answer has been most humiliating to us, indeed, but most honouring to God.  We see as never before how accurately our character has been understood, how patiently our evil propensities have been resisted, how truly our life has been guided towards the highest ends.

The obvious lessons are:-

1.  Be discreet in your importunity.  Two parables are devoted to the inculcation of importunity.  And it is a duty to which our own intolerable cravings drive us.  But there is an importunity which offends God.  There is a spiritual instinct which warns us when we are transgressing the bounds of propriety; a perception whereby Paul discerned, when he had prayed thrice for the removal of the thorn in his flesh, that it would not be removed.  There are things, about which a heavenly-minded person feels it to be unbecoming to be over-solicitous; and there are things regarding which it is somehow borne in upon us that we are not to attain them.  There are natural disabilities, physical or mental or social weaknesses and embarrassments, regarding which we sometimes cannot but cry out to God for relief, and yet as we cry we feel that they will not be removed, and that we must learn to bear the burden cheerfully.

2.  On the other hand, we must not be false in prayer.  We must utter to God our real desires in their actual intensity; while at the same time we must learn to moderate desires which we see to be unpleasing to God.  We must learn to say with truth: 

  Not what we wish but what we want
    Thy favouring grace supply;
  The good unasked, in mercy grant,
    The ill, though asked, deny.

Learn why God does not make the coveted blessing accessible to you, and you will learn to pray freely and wisely.  Try to discover whether there is not some peculiar advantage attaching to your present state—­some more wholesome example you can furnish, some more helpful attitude towards others; some healthier exercise of the manlier graces of Christianity, which could not be maintained were your request granted.