A pastor recently said something that has been sitting with me: We pray prayers that are far too small.

I thought I understood what he meant.

Then I visited a woman whose husband had been bedridden and unable to speak for seven years.

We spent some time in their home reminiscing about his life.  We talked about who he was, who they had been together, and the goodness of God. There was something sacred about remembering a person beyond their present circumstances. Eventually, I asked her a simple question:

“How can I pray for your husband?”

She told me that she almost asked me to pray for complete healing. But instead, she said she wanted to pray a “realistic prayer.”  She wanted to ask God to comfort him, and I felt an immediate tenseness in my body.  Not because comfort was a bad prayer.  It was a good prayer. A necessary prayer, even.  But something about calling it realistic didn’t sit right with me. Realistic for who?  

So, I asked her, “Well, what would you pray for if the unrealistic were on the table?”  She didn’t hesitate. “That my husband would speak again and walk again.”  So that’s what we prayed.  We prayed that God would comfort him.  And we prayed that God would do the thing that seemed least likely.

That he would speak.

That he would walk.

I don’t know what will happen. But I know what I believe.  I believe that what is realistic for me and what is realistic for God are not necessarily the same thing.  I think something happens to us when we’ve prayed for something for a long time and God hasn’t answered.  

We adapt. We adapt, because we feel that we have to.  Human beings are remarkably good at protecting ourselves. We find ways to survive physically, emotionally, and mentally. Sometimes that means adjusting our expectations until they no longer hurt quite as much.  We stop asking for the thing we really want. We ask for something smaller. Something reasonable. Something we can imagine God doing. Something that won’t leave quite as much of a bruise if the answer is no.

Eventually, we can become very good at praying prayers that don’t require us to hope too much.

We call them realistic prayers.  Maybe that’s wisdom.  Sometimes it probably is.  But sometimes I wonder if its resignation wearing the clothes of wisdom.

The woman I met had lived seven years inside an unanswered prayer. I don’t blame her for wanting a prayer she could live with.  And if I’m honest, I recognized something of myself in her.  There are things I have believed God for that I have eventually conceded to “realistic requests.” There are significant prayers that I have taken a break from. There are requests that I have bargained God down to a quarter of their original cost. Things I stopped asking for because disappointment has a way of teaching you new definitions of normal.  That’s the strange thing about unanswered prayer.  It doesn’t just challenge our faith.  Sometimes it changes what we’re willing to ask for.

Paul prayed that God would do something beyond what we could ask or think.  Not just beyond what we have asked.  Beyond what we can even imagine asking. “Exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think.”  I wonder if sometimes the limitation isn’t on God’s ability. It’s on our imagination.

We put a ceiling on our prayers because we’ve mistaken the boundaries of our experience for the boundaries of God. We’ve made our circumstances the measuring stick for what God is allowed to do.

But what if God wants us to ask for the impossible?

What if there is a particular joy in exploring the boundaries of our awe of Him?  What if faith isn’t always about knowing what God will do?  What if sometimes faith is simply being willing to ask?  Jesus tells us to ask, seek, and knock.  Bartimaeus doesn’t seem particularly interested in making his request reasonable. Jesus asks him what he wants, and he says plainly, “Rabbi, I want to see.”

There is something beautiful about being that honest with God.

Not because God owes us the answer. 

But because He is God.