Does God answer prayer? – Vayyetzei
Jacob’s dream of a ladder joining earth and heaven is often understood as symbolising the process of prayer.
Man and God have reciprocal communication. Man speaks to God, God speaks to man. Man is not afraid to address God; God is not too great to respond.
Our awareness of the privilege of praying is axiomatic. I still recall how distressed I was to see it cheapened by a David Frost program in Sydney years ago, when I was amongst religious leaders present in the studio.
Trying to encapsulate the great subject of God, Frost asked, “Do you remember a prayer in your life that was answered?” The audience responded with banalities, and I wondered what I was doing there.
Is this all there is to prayer, I wanted to know. Is petitionary prayer everything?
For Judaism the possibilities of prayer are endless. There are prayers of praise, in which we express the greatness of God, the wonder of His creation and His generosity to His creatures… prayers of thanksgiving, acknowledging the Divine gifts of life, love, beauty, time, nature and the human mind… prayers of penitence, in which, conscious of our failings, we seek to correct ourselves and return to God… prayers of confidence (“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”)
There are also prayers of petition, but they should not be trivialised (“God, I need a heavenly handout!”). A remarkable prayer of petition is in the Siddur: “bless the work of my hands, so that I may be able to support my family with ease and not with pain, by lawful and not by forbidden means, for life and peace”.
Are such prayers heard? Rav Kook said, “By prayer, we lift ourselves to a world of perfection”. A poet said, “He who rises from prayer a better man, his prayer is answered.”
What we have to avoid is selfish prayer, begging for special consideration or personal favours (the rabbis say, “He who prays for another person will be answered first”)… useless prayer, hoping against hope that a fact will not be a fact (in the rabbinic example. a husband whose wife is giving birth and he prays that it will be a boy)… vulgarised prayer, in which an athlete prays to win a match or a student asks to pass an examination (rather ask for help to do justice to your abilities irrespective of the result)… immoral prayer, which intensifies hatreds or asks for evil to befall another person.
Said Judah the Pious, “In time of war, the prayer should not be for victory for one side against the other, but that the Holy One, blessed be He, may influence the hearts of all of them to make peace.”
Sometimes the answer to a petitionary prayer is “no”. Bachya used to say, “God, You know what is for my good. If I list my wants, it is not to remind You of them, but so that I may better understand how great is my dependence upon You. If l ask for things that make not for my well-being, it is because I am ignorant; Your choice is better than mine, and I submit myself to Your decrees and Your direction.”
And finally, while we have a right to address God about our needs and anxieties, Judaism says, “Do not rely on miracles”. Don’t leave it all to God. He will help you find the solution, but often it will be by enabling you to see the problem in perspective and face the future knowing sometimes that you can overcome obstacles, and at other times that your options are limited and you have to come to terms with reality.
