Unanswered prayers

I was listening to an essay by CS Lewis while preparing supper. The essay was about prayer, “petitionary prayers,” as he calls them. (I think, forgive me I can’t find it again, but I thought it was called “The Efficacy of Prayer”). I have thought a lot about prayer over the last year and a half. Why it seemed some of our prayers were answered, while others were not. Why God seemed to be helping us in some ways, but yet not in others. It’s a topic I find interesting on a personal level.

The narrator then read something that I had never considered before. Once I heard it, I was shocked I had never thought of the idea. It seemed so dreadfully obvious. In fact, it struck me so hard that I asked my husband if he had ever considered the idea before either. He had not.

CS Lewis posits that even Jesus did not have his prayer answered in Gethsemane. Wow! There. That is it. I had never considered that before. I focused more on the “Thy will be done” than the “Let this cup pass from me.” God couldn’t answer Christ’s prayer the way he wanted, the fate of mankind hung on the plan. But Christ asked it. Not only did he ask it, but he then upon the cross said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27: 46)

How I could have gone this far in my life without really thinking about this? Last summer, when my fervent prayers were not answered, and I was angry and bitter I felt forsaken, unloved. Christ felt that too.

This realization helped put everything into perspective for me. Unanswered prayers are not a sign of God not approving of me, or not loving me. After all, you can not claim that God did not love Christ or approve of Him. If God can refuse to answer the prayer of His own beloved son, then my more insignificant prayers may go unanswered also.

Christ’s prayers of finding another way forward, were denied in order bridge the gap between mankind and God. You can’t claim that about my prayers. They do not carry the same significance. But like Christ there may be more going on than what I see.

Unlike Christ, I am not privy to the plan. He knew what His role in salvation was, and He knew the stakes. I can’t know the mind of God or the greater plan for my own life and the lives of those around me.

This was a sobering realization. Certainly a new way of framing my frustrations with unanswered prayers.

Matthew 26: 38-39 Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with
sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”
Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed,
“My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.
Yet not as I will, but as you will.”