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