Prayer is a funny thing. It can seem so perfunctory at times - this is something that should be avoided - but because we are creatures given overly to feelings, it is not unusual to find ourselves experiencing what the medievals called spiritual dryness. We cannot live on feelings alone and they is usually a very poor judge of reality. Just because we don't feel something doesn't mean our circumstances are any different to when we did feel something.

Prayer is about persistence and about listening. We tend to do a lot of the talking. Imagine a conversation that is entirely one-way, which, of course, is not a conversation at all. Not very fair is it?

Prayer is also one of those things, one of those important things, that can be answered quite emphatically. I won't go into my own recent case of answered prayer. It was not a coincidence and not a fluke, but genuinely amazing. I am still tingling from it. God doesn't always answer our prayers in such a way. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be earnest and believing when we ask. There will be an answer, one way or or another.