Why Prayer Works and Doesn’t Work

People often ask me ‘how does prayer work’ or ‘why doesn’t it work?’ by which they mostly mean ‘why didn’t God stop the bad thing happening?’

I don’t have much of an answer but for what it’s worth: prayer ‘works’ because it is the thread that connects us to God and God is the one unchanging, utterly reliable character and always lovingly compassionate being. Full of grace, tenderness and patience. Prayer ‘works’ because it is the action of remembering that we are already and always in the presence of God. It does not ‘work’ if by ‘work’ you are thinking that praying is only a means for God to give you give you what you think you need.

We come to God because God is God. We come even when we are broken. When we refuse to come, when we are most broken/angry/hurt/disappointed we are like a child hiding under the bed upstairs when there is a place in a parent’s embrace beside a warm fire downstairs.

Of course prayer doesn’t even, (or very rarely in my experience) FEEL like a warm embrace by a cosy fire… but that’s the hiss and static of all the pain or worry in my mind, not the absence of God.

When we hurt, God hurts with us. The gospels record Jesus crying on at least two occasions.

Asking how prayer works is like asking how love ‘works’. We rarely ask ‘how does love work?’ we just know it does, it always makes a difference even when it is inarticulate or clumsy. Sometimes we feel that love alone isn’t enough but it IS because it is the thread that links us to other people and to God.

Without that thread we are lost. Prayer is an audible expression of the invisible thread of love. It doesn’t need to ‘work’.