People the world over, from all religious backgrounds, have been faced at times with the apparent contradiction of praying earnestly for God's help and then having the outcome of their prayers seem less than triumphant.
The question of God's reliability deserves more than a cursory answer in the face of circumstances that cause us to cry out as Christ Jesus did on the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"Mark 15:34 Jesus' resurrection proved that God had not forsaken him. But in a time of need we may find ourselves asking, "Can I really count on God time after time, for every need, in every situation? What about apparent failures or unresolved troubles?"
Like others, I've done my share of crying out to God to make sense of things when my prayers seem to have failed. These moments of anguish, however, have ultimately led me not to question God but to question the question "Can I count on God?" It has become increasingly clear to me that the flaw is not in God but in a self-centered approach to that question. It suggests that we are the center of our own existence, separate from Him; that God is just one of a number of factors that govern our experience. Is it appropriate, when it seems prayer is ineffective, to blame God if we've set ourselves up in the role of being, in effect, a little god, and have relegated Him to the position of a beneficent influence that we hope will enter our personal sphere and make things better?
