e. Such an attitude may easily
set us beyond the possibility of receiving that which God knows we need. We
must not forget that our poor little plea for help and blessing does not
exhaust the possibilities of prayer. Our words go upward to God's throne
twisted by our imperfect thinking, narrowed by our outlook, sterilized by
the doubts of our hearts, and we do not know what is good for us. His word
comes downward into our lives laden with the quiet certainty of the
Eternal, wide as the vision of Him who seeth all, deep as the wisdom of Him
who knoweth all.

So, however much it may be to say 'Hear me,' it is vastly more to say
'Cause me to hear.' However much I have to tell Him, He has more to tell
me. This view of prayer will help to clear up for us some of the
difficulties that have troubled many minds. We hear people speak of
unanswered prayer; but there is no such thing, and in the nature of things
there cannot be. I do not mean by that, that to every prayer there will
come a response some day. To every prayer there is a response now. In our
confused and mechanical conception of the God to whom we pray, we separate
between His hearing and His answering. We identify the answer to prayer
with the granting of a petition. But prayer is more than petition. It is
not our many requests, it is an attitude of spirit. We grant readily that
our words are the least important part of our prayers. But very often the
petitions we frame and utter are no part of our prayers at all. They are
not prayer, yet uttering them we may pray a prayer that shall be heard and
answered, for every man who truly desires in prayer the help of God for his
life receives that help there and then, though the terms in which he
describes his need may be wholly wide of the truth as God knows it. So the
real answer to prayer is God's response to man's spiritual attitude, and
that response is as complete and continuous as the attitude will allow it
to be. The end of prayer is not to win concessions from Almighty Power, but
to have communion with Almighty Love.

'Cause me to hear'; make a reverent, responsive, receptive silence in my
heart, take me out beyond my pleadings into the limitless visions and the
fathomless satisfactions of communion with Thyself. Speak to me. That is
true prayer.

In the quietness of life,
When the flowers have shut their eye,
And a stainless breadth of sky
Bends above the hill of strife,
Then, my God, my chiefest Goo