Unanswered Prayers

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 2, 1909

Unanswered Prayers

LIKE some schoolmaster, kind in being stern, Who hears the children crying o'er their slates, And calling, “Help me, master,” yet helps not, Since in his silence and refusal lies Their self-development; so God abides, Refusing what we ask; he is not deaf To any cry sent up from earnest hearts; He hears, and strengthens when he must deny; He sees us weeping o'er life's hard sums, But, should he dry our tears, and give the key, What would it profit us when school were done, And not one lesson mastered? What a world Were this if all our prayers were granted! Not In famed Pandora's box were such vast ills As lie in human hearts, should our desires, Voiced one by one in prayer, ascend to God And come back as events, shaped to our wish. What chaos would result! In my fierce youth I sighed out breath enough to move a fleet, Voicing wild prayers to heaven for fancied boons Which were denied; and that denial bends My knee to prayers of gratitude each day Of my maturer life. Yet from those prayers I rose always regirded for the strife And conscious of new strength. Pray on, sad heart! That which thou pleadest for may not be given; But in the lofty altitude where souls Who supplicate God's grace are lifted, there Thou shalt find help to bear thy future lot, Which is not elsewhere found.

— Selected.