A few months ago, my husband left me.

Granted, it was only three weeks for a business trip, but it felt like an eternity.  Fortunately, his company phone allowed us to call back and forth to China on a local phone number.  We talked as much as we wanted almost every day.

And then one morning I called and got his voicemail.  In China, it was bedtime, so I knew he had to be there.  I waited a bit, called again, and got voicemail again.  So I left a message, confident that when he returned from where ever he’d gone, he would call back.  Then I waited.

When it got to be noon and he still hadn’t called, I started to get steamed.  Here I sat, all alone with four kids to look after, and he couldn’t even be bothered to return my calls!  I had sat by the phone long enough.  I went about my day, annoyed and frustrated.

Turns out, his voicemail wasn’t going through for some reason.  If I had just called back once or twice, he probably would have picked up.

That got me thinking.  How often do I do this in my prayer life? I pray for something.  I wait a day or two and get no response.  I try again.  And still I get nothing.  And then I get angry and I decide God doesn’t really want to hear from me anyway.  And I go about my life, feeling stressed and abandoned and angry.

All the time, God is right there, waiting to hear from me.  I just need to make the effort.  The Bible tells us to pray without ceasing.  Can you imagine what an amazing world it would be if we all did that?

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In between raising and homeschooling four boys, being a landlord, and writing under-appreciated fiction, Jana blogs at Later… I’m Blogging.