The third part of the first kind of prayer is our need. This is a delicate thing, and yet it is a great virtue. What a beautiful nature it is that will refrain from asking relief from trouble, from difficulty and suffering, except from the one Friend. This is a virtue and not pride. The door of faith is kept open for that Friend upon Whom they can call and ask and obtain ease.

"There is One to Whom I can go in my trouble and distress and despair. You are the One, the only One. You are He before Whom nothing is hid. If I desire to unburden myself of this trouble, You, O Lord, are He to Whom I will go."

What a great thing this is! What a sense of honor it is that causes him to refrain from telling his suffering to anyone but God, believing that He will help more than anyone can help. Perhaps another man could help, but it will not bring the satisfaction that comes when it is God that has given the help. What a great pleasure, what a great honor God has done to give him help! That is what comes when the problem has been solved which comes into the life of every noble man, everyone with tender feelings, with inherited good and religious sentiments -- solved by deciding, "There is no one whom I will ask in my poverty and trouble and need, but only God."

These are three things that go to make up the first kind of prayer.

There is a story that a king was traveling and hunting in the woods, and the king was hungry and stopped at the house of a peasant, who treated him very kindly. When the king was leaving this peasant, he was so touched with his kindness that, without telling him that he was a king, he said to him, "Take this ring, and if ever you are in trouble, come to me in the city, and I will see what I can do for you." After a time there was a famine, and the peasant was in great trouble, and his wife and child were dying; and he set out to go and see this man.

When he showed the ring, he was brought to the king. And when he entered the room, he saw the king busy in prayer; and when the king came near to him, he said, "What were you doing?" "Praying for peace and love and happiness among my subjects," said the king. "So there is one greater than you," said the peasant, "to whom you must go for what you seek? Then I will go to him who is greater and on whom even your destiny depends." He would accept no help; and at last the king had to send what was needed quietly to his home, first saying that no one must tell him that it came from the king.

What honor, what spirit it brings when man fixes his trust on Him Who is called "Almighty," Who is Almighty.

Rumi says, "When the fire, air, earth, and water all seem to us dead things, the elements, yet they are servants to God, they work for Him, and they always obey Him!" And he goes on to say, in another part of his Masnavi: "Man, when he becomes intelligent, begins to see causes. But it is the superman who sees the Cause of causes, the Source of causes."

God is the Cause of causes, the precedent Cause. One who looks at the precedent Cause sees the cause of all in time. A person may study causes all his life, and yet never come to understand the Cause of causes. All causes before that Cause become effects! That Cause remains the Cause which is called "the Word"; then it became Light.

"When the Word was spoken," says the Qur'an, "all things came to existence."

"Without Him" (the Word), says St. John, "was not anything made that was made."

What is this Cause? It is that inner divine Impulse which has made itself active in every direction, and has accomplished whatever it purposed. It is that which has accomplished all things. The one Cause behind all things is the cause which we call the Power of God.