Prayer

                                                          Albrecht Durer  (1471 - 1528)



Prayer is indeed the soul's sincere desire, and few of us find our miracles, because we cannot discover what we want the most.  And sometimes we never start to find out until our whole world crashes and we are forced to look at life from a new angle, one which we perhaps see for the first time only when God says "No!".

When disappointments come, there are two things we must question before we question God or His purposes.  No matter how great our longing or how fervently we pray, when God says no, we must question our desires and ourselves.  Many times, we should ask not what is wrong with our prayers but what is wrong with us.

We would not be realistic, however, unless we faced the fact that while our desires may be right, and we ourselves fully worthy of receiving that for which we pray, still God may say no.  Why?

Sadly enough, very often only time alone can give us the reason.  But if, along with the cry, which comes to all of us sooner or later:  "Why, God, why?"...... we can give the simple affirmation, "There is some reason, and one day I shall find it", we can save ourselves untold heartbreak.

 Besides no or yes, there is a third answer God often gives us when we pray.  Time and again, when I used to ask my mother for some gift, "we'll see", she would say, "just be patient and do all you can do about it, and then we'll see".

So I think God answers us - many times.

But other times what happens depends, ultimately, on how much we work with God, with any and with all of the manifold powers through which He works.  Thomas Edison said, "We don't know the millionth part of one per cent about anything.  We don't know what water is.  We don't know what electricity is.  We don't know what heat is.  We have a lot of hypotheses about these things but that is all.  But we do not let our ignorance about these things deprive us of their use".

So with Prayer.  We really don't know the millionth part of one per cent about it.  But what we do know is enough to enable us to use it, and through it, to let God use us.

                          Extract from  'There is no unanswered Prayer' by Margaret Blair Johnstone.