Some prayers are followed by silence because they are wrong, others because they are bigger than one can understand.  It will be a wonderful moment for some of us when we stand before God and find that the prayers we clamored for in early days and imagined were never answered, have been answered in the most amazing way, and that God's silence has been the sign of the answer.  (Oswald Chambers, Daily Thoughts for Disciples, p. 75)