For every story of answered prayers there seems to be just as many seemingly unanswered ones. I find this discouraging sometimes.

Jesus likens asking in prayer to a child asking their earthly father for something (Luke 11:11-13). Don’t earthly fathers want to give generously to their children? Jesus tells us God loves being generous and hears every prayer (1 John 5:15).

Taking the parenting analogy a bit farther, we also know that adults withhold things a child asks for if they know they are not the appropriate or helpful. I ask for something from God and I don’t get it. I know God heard me, but chose to say no at this time. Sigh. I’m disappointed. Or frustrated. Or worse.

It’s not all disappointment. Just last week I had my housing prayer requests answered very nicely. But I would have preferred them to be answered a week or two (or five) earlier.

I don’t understand it all.

Sometimes I ask God if it’s okay to keep asking for this or for that, and I feel he says yes, so I keep asking. Sometimes I ask if he wants me to pray something different. This very morning I’d even bored myself praying for the same thing so I ended up praising God instead of asking for anything, and I actually felt pretty good despite my circumstances not having changed a bit.

Overall, I think we must simply take to heart that God hears us and even more importantly, perhaps, he enjoys hearing from us. I like Annie F. Downs’ reassurance that our prayers can be muttered under our breath or written in a journal. (If I didn’t write down some of my prayers I would forget later when I’d actually got to see them fulfilled.) In addition to the muttering and the Sunday School issue prayer journal, I would add that prayers can be cried, can be typed in a message by a friend, painted in a picture or even danced out in the garden. God’s listening.