210- Two Letters in One Week

 

St-Takla.org Image: A balance of truth with writing tools, book, money. صورة في موقع الأنبا تكلا: ميزان الحق، مع أدوات كتابة، و كتاب، ومال (نقود) وخلافه.

Maggie, the university student, was always honest with her mother hiding nothing from her. She was decent, kind and cheerful. She sent her mother two letters in one week asking her to send thirty dollars. The first letter was a long one, in which she talked about her desire to attend the birthday of one of her friends who lived 50 miles away from the college. She mentioned that she would spend the weekend with her, if her mother would approve it. She wrote about her friends who would attend the party and stay with her after the party. She kept on praising them and their behavior. She repeated many times in the letter the words, “If you would like me, mom, to go with them.”

 The mother sent a letter of refusal, not because of the amount of money she required, but because she was going to a distant place and was staying overnight with a family whom the mother did not know anything about.

After the mother had put the letter in the mailbox, she received another letter from her daughter. It was a very short letter, about 5 lines. It said that her colleague became ill so she gave her all the money she had and that she needed thirty dollars. Her mother sent her fifty dollars by telegram.

The first letter included an expression of yielding to the mother's will but the short letter did not, yet the girl knew that she was implementing her mother's desires.

 Many times we lengthen our prayers and declare with our tongues, but not with our hearts, the yielding of our will into the hands of God but God does not respond. While other times we pray for seconds from our hearts without saying “Thy will be done”, yet God is happy with every simple true word.

→ English translation of the story here at St-Takla.org: خطابان في أسبوع واحد.

God, teach me how to pray.

Let my prayer be according to Your will, not by words but by heart

Let Your Holy Spirit shape me so that my will be transformed according to Your will,

And my happiness be in Your satisfaction.

Let me carry Your mind in me and rejoice in Your union with me

So that I can accomplish Your joy in me.

From the Door Not from the Window

Short Stories (Stories for the Youth) Books by Father Tadros Yacoub Malaty

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