At the turn of the 19th century J. J. Wagner wrote a spine-tingling story about a mother and father who were granted three wishes through the "tragic magic" of a monkey's paw. They wished first for two hundred pounds. That evening they were brought word that their son had been killed and partly mutilated by a machine in a horrible accident where he worked. The company was compensating them with two hundred pounds.

In grief and panic the mother used the second wish - that they might have their son back. In the middle of that night there came a groaning and a rattling sound as if someone were dragging himself across their front porch in the dark; then a repeated knocking on the front door. The father feared the truth - the mangled body of their son. Immediately he used the third wish - that the ghoulish corpse would disappear.

How better it would have been if the first answer had been "No." The story makes a profound point. Sincere prayer is not the rubbing of a monkey's paw. Sometimes we know not what we ask, and do not see the possible consequences of our prayers, so a loving father has to answer "No."