The Two Prayers

‘Give me,’ he prayed, the foolish, wilful boy.
He thought that but to have was to enjoy.
A broken, sobered man, robbed, hungry, bare,
‘Make me,’ he prayed; and ’twas a wiser prayer.

Much wiser. My possessions may decay:
What I become can no one take away.
A man’s true worth may be appraised the best
By what he was, not by what he possessed.

This little poem was written by JMS Tait and published in a small volume of poetry entitled BELLS AND POMEGRANATES. It is evidently based on the parable of the prodigal son.  Much is made by preachers of our Lord’s main thrust of teaching in that parable, which is that God the Father is always willing to welcome back the wanderer. Yet the poet takes two phrases from that parable to remind us that what we are is much more important than what we have.

It is good to remember this, not only in days of prosperity, when we forget what we should be in the mad rush of trying to get more and more, to keep up with the Jones’es, or even to exceed them. It is also good to remember this truth in days of adversity, of recession, when we are in danger of losing what we have.

Surely our prayer for today ought to be much more ‘Make me’ than ‘Give me’. The only possible improvement on the poem as written above is to bring it home to us, by changing the last two lines to read, A man’s true worth may be appraised the best by what he is, not what he may possess.