Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral worked as a teacher. This poem can therefore be read as her personal cry to God for help when she felt overwhelmed by teaching or grieved by the unjust obstacles she faced.

The poem is about reaching out to God for help. Mistral turns first to Jesus when her life becomes difficult, rather than to other people.

The poem is sincere and heartfelt. It models how to pray with deep humility. For example, she is so humble that she asks Jesus's forgiveness for calling herself by his same name, teacher.

As she prays, she models calling on God to change her heart in times of stress, not the hearts of other people. For example, she writes,

Uproot from me this impure desire for justice that still troubles me, the petty protest that rises up within me when I am hurt.

This teaches us that in times of trouble or grief, we shouldn't be pointing the finger at other people and asking God to change them; we should ask God to help us reframe the problem and give us a new perspective.

She teaches several important lessons about power: she wants her "barefoot" students blessed by God in their poverty, not made rich. She asks God to strengthen her through what the world would think of as her weaknesses. She asks not be given more, but to be made strong in her poverty.

Mistral teaches us that in stress or sorrow, prayer to be more like Jesus—to have his feelings and heart—will help us through our crisis more than a change in our circumstances. We need to be transformed internally rather than externally in order to best face our problems.

Because of her advocacy of education for poor children, Mistral was sometimes opposed unjustly by those who wanted to stop her from teaching. In response, she prayed to God to help her anger and outrage disappear. This is one example of how to turn to God in a time of stress.

We could push back and argue that outrage at unjust circumstances is sometimes justified, like when Jesus threw the moneylenders from the temple, but Mistral prays hard in order to bear as much as she can without anger.