Ned was not quite tall enough to see over the dashboard of the car I was driving.

“Hurry up, Mom!” he urged.

But he was too young to read the road signs that said 45 miles per hour. As I began to apply the brakes, he demanded, “Why are you stopping?”

“There’s a school bus that has just stopped,” I explained.

As soon as we started again, he urged, “Pass him, Mom.” He was too small to see the double yellow line.

I thought to myself, How like me when I pray! Spiritually I am too young to read the road sign, too small to see what lies ahead. Yet how often I am guilty of telling God how to run things.

We may make requests, but never insist on having our own way lest we become one of those of whom it was said, “He gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul” (Psalm 106:15).

We must pray in simple, childlike faith; urgently, persistently. But we must always pray, “Thy will be done.”

An excerpt from Legacy of a Pack Rat by Ruth Bell Graham