You may have heard the formula: “Sometimes God says ‘Yes’, sometimes ‘no’, sometimes ‘wait.”

It’s a way to talk about our sense that God doesn’t respond to prayer in the ways we want.

As we’re reading through Mark, we find stories where Jesus says none of those things. He asks a question. He introduces a new topic. He takes the disciples away from the crowd so that he can teach them about his impending death among other things.

The disciples are afraid to ask him what he means. Then he asks them what they were talking about while walking. And none of them wants to admit that they were talking about who was the greatest disciple.

All of this interaction falls under the heading “prayer”, if that means “talking with God.” But none of it falls under the heading “prayer”, if that means “Requests made to God that could be answered ‘yes’, ‘no’, or ‘wait.”

We are, I think, often like the disciples. Afraid to ask questions about what we don’t understand. Talking among ourselves about who God likes most. Working hard to find the right formulas and then teaching those formulas.

In this gospel, Mark, and God, constantly show us that God is open to conversation rooted in relationship. The kind of conversations that take strange turns and are full of parables. The kind of conversations that bounce between words and silence and updates from other people and events and acts of service.

I’m aware, of course, that in our minds, what’s most important is the request we just made to heal our loved one. Like the man who brought his son. In those moments, we count the absence of a direct response to our request as the silence of God or the failure of prayer (or the failure of our faith).

I think it’s often a failure of what we’ve been taught. And God’s still open to actual conversation.