I just recently finished a great book by Philip Yancey entitled Prayer – Does It Really Make Any Difference. There were a ton of quotes from it that I jotted down but one stuck with me from the chapter on Unanswered Prayer. Do you have any of those?
This one is about St. Augustine and his mother Monica.
Sometimes an unanswered prayer opens the door to something far better. For fifteen years Monica prayed for her son Augustine as he indulged his senses and investigated exotic philosophies. When Augustine finally converted, these were the very experiences that gave depth and richness to his writings, allowing him to set the course of Christian thought for centuries. Once, Monica prayed all night that God would stop her son from going to wicked Rome, but he tricked her and sailed away. It was on that trip, in fact, that Augustine became a Christian. Reflecting later, he said that God denied his mother once in order to grant her what she had prayed for always.
