The dilemma of unanswered prayer is particularly vexing for us who pray. We who try to be diligent in prayer know the disappointment that attends prayers that seemingly go unanswered. Why doesn’t a loved one recover from illness? Why can’t family members reconcile? Why doesn’t a prodigal child come home to God? I have no ready-made answer to such perplexing questions. Prayer remains mysterious to me. I know God works cooperatively with our prayers, yet I don’t understand how it all works, or rather, how it doesn’t work sometimes.
The Psalms keep us in good company when it comes to wrestling with unanswered prayer. Consider what the Psalmist prays in Psalm 77, “Will the Lord reject forever? Has his unfailing love vanished forever? Has God forgotten to be merciful?” (Ps. 77.9). When we can’t see God working in present circumstances, the Psalmist falls back on God’s faithfulness in the past, “Then I thought, ‘To this I will appeal, the years when the Most High stretched out his right hand, I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago’” (Ps. 77.10-11). I am helped by something Tim Keller wrote in his book on Prayer, “God will either give us what we ask or give us what we would have asked if we knew everything he knows.” We often don’t recognize God’s answer to prayer because it’s not the answer we’re looking for.
Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1877) in today’s prayer gives thanks for answers to prayer as well as God’s refusal to give us everything we want. I’m intrigued with his comment that if God granted us all our requests in prayer, we would be ruined. It makes me think of a line in Garth Brooks’ song, “Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayer.”