How Far Can Prayers Fly?

“The prayer of the humble pierces the clouds, and he will not be consoled until it reaches the Lord.” ~Sirach 35:17 

I am pretty sure that most of my prayers to God have been somewhere along the lines of, “please, may I have...” or, “please, make this happen...” or, “please make so-and-so stop being mean to me,” etc. In a word, my prayers are generally very egocentric. For example, an elderly man recently gave me some flavored peanuts. They were delicious, but as I got to the bottom of the bag, I noticed that there were some healthy looking maggots also chomping away on my delicious peanuts. I immediately spit them out and between dry heaves started praying, “Dear, God, is this how I am going to die? Why does stuff like this keep happening to me?”  My first thoughts were how I was going to save my own skin from almost certain death when that poor old man, who I am sure must have terrible eyesight, had been happily chomping away on his giant bag of peanuts for who knows how long, blissfully unaware of what he had unintentionally been sharing his snack with. I was torn between telling him about his squishy snack invaders and letting it slide. In the end I decided to tell him, even at the expense of embarrassing him, just so he wouldn’t eat any more or share them with anyone else who would not be so “understanding”, so to speak.  

 
My prayers to God for the rest of that day were mostly, “Please, don’t' let me and that old man and whoever else ate those peanuts die from the inside out of some horrible bacterial infection.” My guardian angel must have slapped a Priority Mail sticker on that prayer because everyone seemed to be fine the next day. Now next time I complain to God that He never answers my prayers, He can add the day He saved me from a bacterial infection after eating maggoty peanuts to the list of prayers asked and answered. If only we knew how fleet-footed our prayers to God are, and how much He enjoys answering them, even the prayers asking Him to prevent death by bug flavored peanuts! What sort of things can we do to answer God when He speaks to us? Even if His request seems silly or too difficult?