In the well-known fairy tale, Aladdin acquires an old and tarnished brass lamp. When he starts to polish it, a genie appears -- the Slave of the Lamp. With the help of the Slave of the Lamp, Aladdin is able to vanquish his enemies and get the girl.

Other versions of this story have the genie granting only three wishes. These other stories seem to have been influenced by the sadness of human experience, for they rarely turn out well. Even Mickey Mouse has a version, based on the tale of the Sorcerer's Apprentice. Something inside us seems to realize that there is no Slave of the Lamp, no powerful force that we can control in order to get what we want. Intuitively we know that if we ever had the opportunity to try and exercise this kind of power, something would probably go horribly wrong.

Yet in our prayer life we can so often attempt to do something of the sort ourselves. We start from a position that God as we understand God is all-powerful. Then we give him a prayer-list of things that we think ought to be fixed, taken care of, resolved. It's not a very long list, though it might be more than Aladdin's three wishes. The rest of our lives we're prepared to take care of ourselves, if only the Slave of the Lamp will handle the stuff we've told him to do.

We laugh at the story of Aladdin, but it's a lot more difficult to laugh at a prayer-life which is predicated on this kind of thinking. Why do we think God is like the Slave of the Lamp? Why do we think we can tell God or ask God to do things? Who do we think is in charge of things, us or God? And -- at the very heart of all these issues -- what exactly did we think we were doing when we took the Third Step? No wonder Step 11 recommends that we pray "only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out." When we get much beyond that, we usually start running into trouble.