“Man must prepare for the thing he has asked for when there isn’t the slightest sign of it in sight.”
Florence Scovel Shinn
In Larry King’s book Powerful Prayers, he shares a parable about two childless couples desperate to conceive.
The wanna-be fathers heard of a wise man who lived far away who had the power to answer prayers. They set out on the long and arduous journey to find the man and, once found, asked for a miracle so they could be fathers. The wise man prayed for them and sent them on their way. A year later, only one of the men had become a father. With bitterness in his heart, the childless man made the long trek back to the wise man to ask why his prayer had not been answered. The sage replied, “As soon as the other man arrived home, he and his wife bought a baby carriage.”
In other words, the new parents acted as if their prayer had already been answered. This is what Florence Scovel Shinn calls active faith.
I wrote about my own successes and failures with this principle in the stories below:
The Ditch Formula: The Certain Path to Success or Failure
The Prayer that Turned an Airplane Around Mid-Flight
If you find yourself like the childless man, step back and ask yourself if you are preparing for your miracle.
And if you find yourself in want of active faith, I recommend reading The Game of Life and How to Play It by Florence Scovel Shinn. Read it every day if you have to.
Then ask yourself, what is your version of the baby carriage.
Louise x
