An Old Prayer, Answered

While tidying the closet, an old notebook turned up. On its back page was a list of prayers I had written in my own handwriting years ago. 'Let me pass the exam.' 'Let my mother's surgery go well.' 'Let me find a job.' 'Let this rift end.' 'Let me have a peaceful home.' I read it line by line and stayed there for a while. I had forgotten some of them completely. And I realized that half of the list had long since come true. The person who wrote those lines in tears that day was now living inside those prayers, and had never said thank you.

Zechariah's prayer begins like this too; with the memory of old prayers. A man whose bones have weakened and whose head has filled with white calls to his Lord in a private supplication and says: 'Never have I been in my supplication to You, my Lord, unhappy.' Before asking for something new, he looks back and sees: the hands he raised all his life never came back empty. That memory gives him the courage to ask for something that seems impossible. So prayer isn't only asking; it is also remembering what has already been given.

Not every prayer is answered the way we want; some are delayed, some come back through a completely different door, and some quietly turn away a harm that was coming. But none of them is lost. Today, remember your own old prayer list. On a piece of paper, write three things you asked for with all your heart years ago, and next to them note what became of them. Give thanks for those that came true, and for those that didn't, say, 'You know better than I do.' Then begin your new prayer like Zechariah: 'My Lord, never have I been unhappy in my supplication to You.'