Prayer and Work Go Hand in Hand

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Throughout your lifetime, your spirit must grow apace with your body. Prayer and work go hand in hand to bring us peace of mind.

This was illustrated when the head of a monastery heard a monk express doubt about the order’s motto: “Pray and work.” He invited the young man to go rowing with him and took the oars himself.

After a while, the young man pointed out that the superior was using only one oar and said: “If you don’t use both, we’ll just go around in circles and you won’t get anywhere.”

“That’s right, my son,” the elder man replied. “One oar is called prayer and the other is called work. Unless you use both at the same time, you just go in circles and you don’t get anywhere.”

The seasoning influence of the years on my life has brought me into a better understanding of the attitude in which to go to prayer. As a result, I now always close my prayer with these words:

Oh Infinite Intelligence, I ask not for more blessings,
but more wisdom with which to make better use of
the greatest of all blessings with which I was endowed
at birth – the right to embrace and direct to ends of my
own choice the powers of my mind.

Source: Napoleon Hill’s Greatest Speeches. Sound Wisdom. Pennsylvania. 2016. Pgs. 161-162.