Blocking My Own Prayers

Agnes Sanford relates how, as the young wife of an Episcopal minister, her child came down with a serious ear infection. It lasted for six weeks while she prayed fearfully and fruitlessly. Then a neighboring minister called to see her husband and learned that the child was sick.

Quite casually, though intently and in a businesslike manner, he prayed for the little boy, who immediately shut his eyes, lost his fever flush and went to sleep. When the boy awoke, his fever was gone and his ears were well. Sanford remarks,

The strange thing is that this did not immediately show me a new world. Instead, it perplexed me greatly. Why did God answer the minister’s prayers when He had not answered mine? I did not know that I myself blocked my own prayers, because of my lack of faith.

Nor did I know that this [successful] prayer could not come from resentment and darkness and unhappiness, as a pipeline can be clogged with roots and dirt. This doubt and confusion remained in my mind, even though the child himself, whenever he subsequently had a bit of an earache, demanded that I pray for him.