When Prayers Go Unanswered: The Deeper Purpose of Delayed Blessings

A father of a large family once approached me saying that his family was living in cramped conditions and his wife was already expecting their eighth child, in a tiny three-room apartment.

He told me that he had prayed for a bigger apartment more than five hundred times, and had also tried various segulot (spiritual remedies). Still, nothing changed and he wanted to understand: “Why are my prayers not answered? Isn’t this discouraging? Doesn’t it show that God doesn’t want to hear me?”

Immediately I recalled a parallel question about Moses, who prayed 515 times to be allowed to enter the Land of Israel, but was not granted his request. So I asked him: “Tell me, how do you think Moses felt after praying so many times with such powerful, pure prayers — like a sharp knife piercing the heavens, as the Midrash says, and God told him: ‘Enough for you, do not continue to speak to Me about this matter’? Did Moses suspect, God forbid, that God hated him or didn’t want to listen to him? If not for that explicit command to stop, perhaps Moses would have prayed another five hundred times or even more! You never heard God tell you to stop praying, so why not continue?”

The man then asked me: “But are you comparing me to Moses? Can I possibly place my prayers on the same level as his, or my relationship with God alongside his?”

I answered him with something every believing Jew must know clearly: God examines whether a person sees Torah and prayer as the ultimate purpose of life, or whether he treats them as mere tools for achieving material goals.

A man prays five hundred times for an apartment. If his request is granted, he rejoices “See? The prayers worked! I got the apartment.” If not, he feels his prayers were in vain. But is prayer really just a tool for getting an apartment?

Prayer is not the means toward an apartment, but rather, the apartment is just the means to prayer! What greater privilege can there be than to connect with God, to cleave to Him through prayer?

Perhaps God withheld the apartment precisely in order to bless him with the gift of prayer. When He saw the man praying with deep devotion, He wanted to give him even more — and so He withheld the apartment again, so that the man would continue to pray, because each prayer was itself a precious gift. Every time he poured out his heart sincerely, God gave him another gift: another opportunity to draw close.

In truth, there is a “disagreement” here: the man sees his prayers as a tool to get an apartment, while God sees the apartment as a tool to give him prayer.

A true believer knows that everything comes from God, and every prayer expresses our dependence on Him. The real test of faith is when prayers are delayed. If a person stops praying when he doesn’t get what he wants, he demonstrates that his trust was only conditional. If however his faith is strong, he continues, seeing the delay itself as good — either because prayer itself is the real purpose, or because God is testing him and refining him. This is a test many people face.

As Nachmanides (Ramban) wrote in Emunah u’Bitachon (Faith and Trust, ch. 1): “Trust in God and do good — that is, even if you know that you are not righteous and your deeds are lacking, still trust in God, for He is merciful and will have compassion on you, as it says: ‘His mercy is upon all His works,’ meaning upon both the righteous and the wicked. And our Sages taught: at the time a person suffers, the Shechinah says: ‘My head is heavy, My arm is heavy.’  Therefore, trust in God, whether righteous or not.”