Amy’s Reviews > Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer > Status Update

“In my ignorance I have asked for A, B, C. But don’t give me them if you foresee that they would in reality be to me either snares or sorrows.’” Page 36
“If God had granted all the silly prayers I’ve made in my life, where should I be now?” Page 37

“To forgive in the moment is not difficult. But to go on forgiving, to forgive the same offense again every time it recurs to the memory—there’s the real tussle. My resource is to look for some action of my own which is open to the same charge as the one I’m resenting. If I still smart to remember how A let me down, I must still remember how I let B down.”

“And perhaps, as those who do not turn to God in petty trials will have no habit or such resort to help when the great trials come, so those who have not learned to ask Him for childish things will have less readiness to ask Him for great ones. We must not be too high-minded. I fancy we may sometimes be deterred from small prayers by a sense of our own dignity rather than of God’s.”

“I have no doubt at all that if they are the subject of our thoughts they must be the subject of our prayers—whether in penitence or in petition or in a little of both: penitence for the excess, yet petition for the things we desire.”

If one forcibly excludes them, don’t they wreck all the rest of our prayers? If we lay all the cards on the table, God will help us to moderate the excesses.“