If asked the question, “Have you ever been disappointed in God?” I suspect there might be one or two hands raised — or maybe even all of our hands!

Those times when in the the midst of some trouble or under pressure, either for ourselves or someone else, we asked for help, but never felt any of that help coming our way. Or times when hearing promises such as in Ps 121: “Our help is from The Lord. The Lord is our guardian, always beside me at my right hand.” The issue is those strained times when such reassurances seem to ring hollow because the trouble doesn’t disappear and the pressure doesn’t let up…

If you’ve ever registered such disappointment – and who hasn’t – the Scriptures provide any number of considerations which speak to this universal experience of unanswered prayer.

One is the wisdom coming from Moses and his friends in Exodus as they face the prospect of annihilation by their enemies in battle. They had prayed for deliverance, but because the defeats continued to pile up, they began to lose patience, let alone their trust in God. Their rescue was tied to the success Moses would have in keeping his hands and arms up in the air. But as the story goes, he grew less and less able to do that as the weeks went by, even though he and everybody else had been begging God to give him the resilience to do just that.

As it happened their prayer was answered, but it came through the strength of other people’s arms. In other words, Moses’ weakening trust that God would intervene gained new vigor because it came to be mixed in with the trust of those right around him. His flagging prayer found its arm strength from the prayer and actions of others. around him.

The lesson? When we pray, we don’t do it in a solitary way, all by ourselves — just as we don’t make it through life all alone. We don’t address God just by ourselves, but always in the strength-filled company of others.

The prayer and belief of Christians is never a solitary undertaking. My faith and my praying is strengthened by the support of other people who are also praying and believing and trusting. And this would include friends, family, spiritual writers, neighbors, the different saints, and especially those who have gone before us. And especially for us who follow Vincent does it take in the tens of thousands in his Family who live and serve today.

Prayer and the life of faith is communal. Each one of our arms is held up and steadied by the prayer, faith and trust of other arms, this especially the case when our own arms begin to sag with disappointment.

A brief second lesson in handling discouragement comes in Jesus’ Lukan parable (18:1-8) about the persistent widow who just wouldn’t let up in her begging — better, her bugging — that judge for a fair verdict. Her doggedness models perseverance in asking, in praying, in coming before God again and again. This strident woman would teach us this lesson.

And so praying and believing and trusting in dry times, in seemingly empty times. At least two lessons come our way. Steadfast and even dogged perseverance, and the willingness to lean on and be fed by the faith and trust of others.