A mother sometimes withdraws or withholds toys from her child to ensure he doesn’t neglect his studies and miss out on a bright career. Similarly God sometimes withdraws or withholds our cherished toys – wealth, love, positions, possessions – to ensure we don’t neglect our spiritual growth and miss out on a bright spiritual career in the hereafter. God wants us to be happy in this world too, but not at the cost of our eternal happiness in the next world. A lost child feels so happy when at last he returns home. Then how much more happy will we – the lost children of God—be when God takes us back to our eternal home? God is constantly planning and endeavoring to provide us this supreme happiness. All we need to do is cooperate with His plan by serving Him, come what may. Therefore when our prayers appear to be unanswered, we can pray to God for the wisdom to accept His plan and the determination to participate in that divine plan.

Srila Prabhupada, the founder of ISKCON, would say that the best prayer—the one prayer that will never fail – is the prayer asking for strength to serve God in every situation. When a child calls the name of his parent, a responsible parent immediately provides his real needs. Similarly when we chant the Holy Names of God, especially the Hare Krishna mahamantra, He will immediately provide our real need—the strength to serve Him. When we humbly chant and pray for this inner strength, we will find that God will never disappoint us.

Hare Krishna

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