It is every mother's worst nightmare. Her 3-year-old son, Kostya, is dying of an incurable disease. The mother believes that God can heal her little boy. She alternates agonizingly between hope and despair, fighting and giving up. Still, she prays, "imbuing her prayer with all the power of her soul, although somewhere deep within her she feared that God would not move the mountain-that He would act not according to her desires, but according to His own will."

Her little boy dies. Why? she thinks to herself. Why would the God to whom I prayed so much allow him to die?

The great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy tells this woman's story in a short story titled "Prayer," which he wrote after reading about a shipwreck in the United States in which many children died. Tolstoy wrote the story to explore the problem of unanswered prayer.

I read the story only recently, when I was pondering the problem myself. I once thought that unanswered prayer was either the result of God's sovereign will, which functions like a trump card, making our prayers largely irrelevant, or the result of human failure, which makes our prayers unacceptable to God, however needy we are. In either case, the outcome is the same-unanswered prayer.

Tolstoy put me into a new idea, both troubling and helpful. What would happen, I wondered, if all our prayers were answered?

I searched my memory, trying to recall some of the prayers I prayed many years ago. I thought about the early and heady years of serving as a youth pastor in southern California when I was ready to conquer the world, with or without Christ. Within two years the high school group I led grew from 20 members to 125. It was the group in the area to attend. I was riding a wave of success. I witnessed many answers to prayer and enjoyed the fruits of my labor. Everything I touched turned into gold.

Eventually the ministry leveled off and lost momentum. And thank God it did, for I had become insufferably proud, a self-appointed expert in youth ministry. I wonder what would have happened to me had all my prayers been answered during those early years of ministry, if our group had continued to grow, if our program had continued to receive recognition. Perhaps unanswered prayer was good for me.

When we pray, we pray not only as saints but also as sinners, very much inclined to use prayer to advance our own selfish interests, even when we pray out of desperation. Prayer for that reason is highly complex. On the one hand, the very act of praying reminds us that we are children of God. On the other hand, that same act of praying exposes us for the fallen creatures we are.

Thus, there are prayers God won't or can't answer, for our own good.

We often say selfish prayers without thinking much about them. We pray for parking spaces when we're running late, never considering that ten other people, as late as we are, might be praying, too, for the two remaining spaces available in the parking garage. We pray for victories in elections, forgetting that victory for one party means defeat for another party that might be just as prayerful as we are. We pray for success in business, though increased sales in our business might undermine competitors down the street who are praying for the same thing and need success more than we do. Not that these prayers are necessarily wrong, but we should remember that answers to our prayers might be at someone else's expense.

When my oldest son, David, was in elementary school, he played on a soccer team that dominated the city league. However, during the final city tournament, they had to square off against a team that had beaten them badly only a few weeks before. Both teams played well. At the end of regulation play, the score was tied 2 to 2. So they had to go into a shootout, where five players from each team shoot against the opposing goalkeeper from twelve yards out. Whichever team scores the most goals in the shootout wins the match.