This is the question of all questions. People daven, ask, plead, and hope, and they are not answered. Sometimes a person will conclude that he should stop davening. If I asked for it so many times and I didn’t receive it, isn’t that a sign that Hakadosh Baruch Hu doesn’t want to give it to me?
This conclusion is fundamentally wrong.
People are accustomed to equating tefillah to Hashem with a request made of a human king. When a person approaches a king of flesh and blood, or, in our times, when he needs something from an important person, he prepares himself carefully, and then he comes and makes his request. If this influential person tells him “No!” the person who approached him understands that the response is negative. Perhaps he’ll try again, but if he gets another no, he’ll realize that he won’t be able to change the negative response.
This is not how it works when a Jew davens to his Creator. A Yid is a son of Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Hakadosh Baruch Hu is the Father of every Jew, and when a son makes a request and the father does not provide it, it is because he first wants to make sure that fulfilling the request will be good for his son.
The Alshich Hakadosh explains this tremendous principle on the passuk in Tehillim (22:3), “My L-rd, I cry out during the day and You do not answer; when night [comes] I do not keep silent.”
Dovid Hamelech taught us:
Elokai – Every Yid says to Hakadosh Baruch Hu: You are my L-rd and my strength; You are my Father, and therefore... I cry out during the day and You do not answer – I call out to You in the daytime, and You don’t answer me, but I know this is not due to hatred. If a stranger made a request of the king and did not receive a response, he won’t repeat his request, since he is afraid this will anger the king. But if the one making the request is the king’s son, he’ll ask again and again, knowing that the king did not ignore him out of hatred, because he is his father. He understands that the king ignored him only because of his faults; the king wants his son to show him more loyalty, and afterward he will respond to him. And that’s why he says: You are my L-rd, and therefore I do not despair of coming before You to daven again. And because I know that You ignore my tefillos only because You want me to come closer to You...
When night [comes] I do not keep silent – Although I’ve already davened during the day, I will daven again at night, because I know that this is what Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants from me. He wants me to daven yet again and to humble myself before Him, until He accepts my tefillos.
If a Yid davened a thousand times and he wasn’t answered, he should daven again, and again, until Hakadosh Baruch Hu listens and responds to him.
Gut Shabbat
Pinchas Shefer
