If prayer were never answered in ways we can discern, chances are we’d be okay with it, though we might stop praying. What is challenging, often maddening and sometimes heart-breaking is that sometimes it seems God answers in ways we want, and sometimes it seems that God does not. It’s the unpredictability more than the disappointments that inhibit our faith, I think.
The people of Nazareth, having heard reports of the wonders Jesus was doing, expected that he would do the same and more in his hometown. But he says it’s not that predictable:
And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”
This sent them into a murderous rage. Was Jesus saying God is capricious? That God cares more for Gentiles than for the chosen people? Why was only one widow helped during the three-and-a-half year famine? Why only one foreign leper healed? Does God only intervene when there’s a larger purpose? Why does God interact at all with God’s creation?
If I knew the answers to that, I’d be much holier (or maybe richer…) than I am now. Why God seems to respond in some cases and not in others continues to perplex us. And none of us has a very full data set from which to draw conclusions. We have some stories in the bible, we have some experiences of our own or other people, but no one knows what God’s record is. We only know that when we pray, sometimes remarkable things happen, and sometimes they do not.
When remarkable things result, and we feel they’re connected to our prayer, we should give thanks and tell people about it. It helps increase our faith and builds that of others. And when it seems we have no response, or not the one we want, we should also talk about that – talk to God about it, and other people, because that’s one definition of faith: to believe despite evidence to the contrary.
I’ve said it before, and need to hear it often: the purpose of prayer is not to ask for things and see what we get. The purpose of prayer is to communicate openly with the God who made us and loves us and knows us better than we can know ourselves, and through that communicating to come to know God more fully. And God has invited us to allow God’s Spirit to pray through us; then we're praying for what God already intends to accomplish.
I have a feeling God’s prayers have a 100% response rate. Let’s figure out how to join ours to God’s. It's as simple as "Come, Holy Spirit..."
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