Part 6 (2/2)
”If you more fully understood the Lord's Prayer, you would know that exactly what you want is included in it. But why cannot you ask for what you desire in your own words? Just go to G.o.d as trustingly as you would to your mother, when you want something you know she will let you have, if it is good for you to have it. And that would be really praying, for, Marty, don't you know there's a great difference between saying prayers and praying? You may say a dozen prayers and not pray at all.”
”Don't I pray when I kneel beside the bed and say those two prayers?”
”You do if you make the pet.i.tions your own, and really desire what you ask for, and if you ask in the right spirit. But if you just say the words over without thinking what you are saying, or whom you are speaking to, it is not praying at all. It is mocking G.o.d.”
”I'm sure I wouldn't do that,” said Marty, looking frightened.
”I know you would not willfully, my dear, but I just want to show you that saying over certain words is not praying. We don't realize what a blessed privilege it is to pray. G.o.d's ear is open night and day to any of us, even the smallest child. He is as ready to hear anything you may have to say as he is to hear Dr. Edgar when he gets up in his pulpit and prays.”
”Then it wouldn't be wrong to ask G.o.d to help me give missionary money regularly, would it?”
”It would be very right.”
That night when Marty knelt beside her bed she really prayed. She felt that G.o.d was listening to her, and when she came to the words, ”Now I lay me down to sleep,” she realized that she was committing herself to his care, and was sure that in that care she was safe. After her usual prayers she paused a moment and then added, ”And, O Lord, please help me to be steady in giving missionary money.”
CHAPTER VII.
HOW MISSIONS HELPED THE HOME FOLKS.
The mission work that Marty had entered upon was teaching her to pray.
She really wished to be a mission worker in her small way and she tried hard to be faithful, but owing to her forgetfulness or impatience or selfishness, things sometimes went wrong. Once or twice she forgot to learn a verse to say at the meeting, and was much mortified. Once she got very impatient with a piece of sewing and spoiled it, and then was angry because some of the girls laughed at her. And she still found it hard to give her money regularly; some weeks she wanted it so much for something else.
But all these little trials she carried to G.o.d and was helped. This led to the habit of bringing all her little troubles to him.
One day Miss Agnes remarked that we don't put enough thanks in our prayers. We ask that such and such things may be done, but we don't thank G.o.d half enough for what he has done and is constantly doing for us. We come to him with all the miseries of our lives, but don't tell him about the happy and joyous things. Afterward Marty put more thanks in her prayers, and she told Miss Agnes that it was astonis.h.i.+ng how many thankful things there were to say.
Marty also used her Bible a great deal more after she joined the band than before.
Besides the verse they were expected to repeat at roll-call, Miss Agnes sometimes asked them to bring all the texts they could find bearing upon a certain subject. The golden text for Sunday-school might be learned from the lesson-paper, but it was necessary to search the Bible for these other verses. At first Marty did not know how to begin to find them and appealed to her mother for help. Mrs. Ashford gave all the a.s.sistance in her power, though saying with a half-sigh,
”I'm afraid I don't know much about these things, Marty.”
One day Mrs. Ashford had been out shopping and in the evening several parcels were sent home. These she opened in the sitting-room. As she unwrapped quite a large one Mr. Ashford inquired,
”What is that huge book?”
When his wife handed it to him he whistled and exclaimed,
”A concordance! What in the world do you want with this? Are you going to study theology?”
”No,” replied Mrs. Ashford, laughing, ”but Marty comes to me with so many questions that I found I could not get on any longer without that.”
”What's a concordance, mamma?” asked Marty, ”and has it anything to do with me?”
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