PRAYING
FOR CLARITY

Topics: Dependence; Direction; Guidance; Prayer; Spiritual Perception; Trust

References: Psalm 37:3–6; Proverbs 3:5–6

When John Kavanaugh, a renowned ethicist, went to work at “the house of the dying” in Calcutta, he was seeking a clear answer about how to spend the rest of his life. On the first morning there he met Mother Teresa. She asked, “And what can I do for you?”

Kavanaugh asked her to pray for him. “What do you want me to pray for?” she asked.

He said, “Pray that I have clarity.”

She said firmly, “I will not do that.”

When he asked her why, she said, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.”

When Kavanaugh commented that she seemed to have the clarity he longed for, she laughed and said, “I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.”

—Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust (HarperCollins, 2000)