How was your Easter?

It got me thinking about one of the most important things I think I've learnt about prayer. I wrote on this site months ago that when our most desperate prayers go unanswered it gives us the chance to experience 'the fellowship of sharing in [Christ's] sufferings', because his most desperate prayer also went spectacularly unanswered. Thinking about the cross again on Good Friday brought it back to me. The night before his crucifixion Jesus asked his Father, with sweat and tears, to please not inflict on him the torture he was about to go through - and no help arrived.

What I realised later was this: God did not rescue Jesus, because he had planned something better than a rescue - a resurrection. Long after the point when Jesus could have done anything to help himself, because he was dead and no-one gets more helpless than being dead, God stepped in and did the most glorious thing ever by making him alive again. (Properly alive that is, the kind of alive that can't ever be dead again.)

Maybe that's true too of some of our prayers, including our most desperate ones, that don't get answered. Maybe for God to answer them in the way we want would only be a rescue, not a resurrection. Maybe there are things in us that can only die and be made new again if we go through the despair of unanswered prayer.

My favourite example is the first story that was written down for this site, Nicole's story about her divorce (under 'Love and heartbreak'). Her prayers for the restoration of her marriage went unanswered but her life and character were transformed. It's a great reminder that if you're in a horrible situation too, whether or not the answers you want are coming, keep on praying...