The subject of the meeting was the removal of defects.
One of the guys at the meeting shared, “By the inch, it is a cinch, and by the yard, it is hard; fortunately, God works with me in inches, not yards.”
He continued, “Our 7th Step is essential; we ask God to deal with all our defects. But the 7th Step prayer is also important. And I had been reading the Big Book for years before I realized that they were not saying the same thing.
“At a meeting one night, someone read the 7th Step Prayer. I pray that you now remove … every single defect of character. I heard the word ‘single.’ I had never heard it before; I was sure that he had misread the Prayer. When I got home, I checked my Big Book. He had not misread, and I had not misheard the reading; there is a difference between the Step and the Prayer; the 7th Step says all our defects; the Prayer says every single defect.
“I thought that God would deal with my defects on a wholesale basis. He would remove them all in one dramatic shot. Working from my memory, I had prayed, “I pray that you now remove … all my defects of character.’ I had a warehouse of faults, and I expected that he would deal with all of them with one swipe of his heavenly hand. But that is not what the Prayer says. And that is not how he worked in my life.
“He dealt with my single defects, one at a time. He did not work with my flaws on a wholesale basis; he worked with me on a retail basis, one defect at a time. He was paying attention to the words of the 7th Step Prayer in the Big Book, not the version that I had been reciting.
“And when I thought more about this, I realized that the defects He removed were not the defects that I thought were important. He worked on the defects that He thought were important. The ones that interfered with my service to Him and my fellows. And further, He took His own sweet time.”
Our AA brother concluded, “I am grateful that my Higher Power works this way in my life. The massive explosive removal of all my defects in one shot would have meant the end of life as I know it. By the inch, it is a cinch, and by the yard, it is hard.”
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