A True Story of Faith

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 30, 1868

A True Story of Faith.

ONE bright afternoon last summer, two little boys of my acquaintance started forth for a ramble in the green fields. They amused themselves for some time with a nice new chain which had been given to one of the boys not long before by his father. But after a while their attention was attracted to other ways: the ripe, red berries, the nimble squirrels, the gay butterflies, all in turn absorbed their little minds, and the new chain was left forgotten upon the ground.

At length both Freddy and Weston became tired of playing, and began to think about home, mother, and supper, and then they remembered the chain, and began to wonder where they could have dropped it. They looked about eagerly for a good while, but the chain was nowhere to be found. Finally said little Weston, “Let’s pray, Freddie, and perhaps that will help us to find the chain.” So these little boys knelt down and repeated the Lord’s Prayer, word for word, with the rather indistinct assurance that by so doing they should obtain help from above. They rose from their knees and renewed their search more diligently, but all to no purpose. They began to feel about discouraged, when little Freddie who had kept up a continual thinking, said, “Look here, Weston, that wasn’t the way to pray; we must pray for what we want; if we want God to help us find the chain, we must ask him to.” So they both knelt down once more, and their little trusting hearts went up to God in a simple earnest prayer, that he would help them to find their missing treasure. And then they again commenced their search. They had gone but a short distance, when the lost plaything was seen shining brightly in the grass. They seized it eagerly and ran home, as fast as their little feet would carry them, to relate to their mother the story of the afternoon’s adventures—the lost chain, the prayer, and its speedy answer.

May not children of a larger growth learn a lesson of simple faith from these little boys, and pray for what they want, remembering the promise, “Ask, and ye shall receive.”