Among the remembered prayers of the very wise and holy St. Thomas More is this: "The things, good Lord, that we pray for, give us the grace to labor for." A good example of somebody who understood this is a little girl whom Leslie Weatherhead mentioned in one of his early books. She was much troubled by the fact that her older brother trapped rabbits, and she had begged him in vain to stop.

One night her mother heard her praying "Dear God, please stop Tommy from trapping rabbits. Please don't let them get trapped. They can't. They won't! Amen." Her mother, troubled and perplexed, asked, "Darling, how can you be so sure that God won't let the rabbits be trapped?" The blessed child calmly replied: "Because I jumped on the traps and sprung them!" Ex ore infantium. When I tell this story in sermons I see smiles. It is a charming story--but not a cute one. It is a paradigm of Christian praying.