Article September 22, 1973 Issue

How Important Is Petition?

ELEANOR YOUNG CLAPP

Much of mankind has always recognized a power greater than itself and tried to communicate with this power through prayer. Petition, affirmation, self-searching, denial of evil, resolution, thanksgiving, and adoration are all important elements of prayer. Many of us —men, women, and children — petition God for safety, for health, for daily supplies, for spiritual understanding. We may feel a natural impulse to thank and adore God, the creator. This, in turn, causes us to examine our own thought and activity in all sincertity and resolve to do better. A strong affirmation of God's presence and goodwill helps us achieve this goal.

So prayer regenerates the lives of individuals. It brings us into wider usefulness and well-being until we reach the heavenly conviction of our closeness to God, the source of all good.

Mrs. Eddy placed great value on prayer. She made it the subject of the first chapter in the textbook, Science and Health. Elsewhere in her writings she says : "When a hungry heart petitions the divine Father-Mother God for bread, it is not given a stone, — but more grace, obedience, and love. If this heart, humble and trustful, faithfully asks divine Love to feed it with the bread of heaven, health, holiness, it will be conformed to a fitness to receive the answer to its desire; then will flow into it the 'river of His pleasure,' the tributary of divine Love, and great growth in Christian Science will follow, — even that joy which finds one's own in another's good." ^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 127;}

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