YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING?

President Jimmy Carter in Oval Office

"Yes, No, a little late and you've got to be kidding." These are the responses of a southern bred Christian who was elected President of the U.S. in 1976 regarding the answers God gives to prayer in our lives. Jimmy Carter, speaks of his experience of prayer as being the most active and intense during his tenure as the president.
Carter speaks of praying for the hostages held in Iran to come home. Carter states that if the hostages had been brought home a week before the November election, he would have served a second term.
But his prayer was answered late. The president was considered a presence of malaise by many in the light of the hostage crisis. But it was just as much a malaise of the people who were still suffering the hangover of the most recent Vietnam conflict and the limitations of political and military power it revealed to a nation disillusioned abroad and at home (Watergate.) For it was the domestic political debacle that had swept Carter into the White House in the first place.
Carter speaks of Rosalyn and him reading the scripture aloud to each other each night (in Spanish) as an ongoing practice. A lifelong faith practice.  

Can you remember a time when your prayer received a "Yes?"

Can you remember a time when your prayer received a "No?"

A little late or You've got to be kidding?

What do we expect of God from our prayers? What do we expect of our presidents from our elections? Are there similarities in the two?

How does one fit prayer into the context of our everyday lives? How do events affect our prayer, and our prayer affect events?

Walter Morton for Terra Incognita