God on Mute
Brilliant title, isn’t it? God on Mute. The strapline: Engaging the Silence of Unanswered Prayer gives a sense of the direction of travel.
It was recommended to me as ‘excellent’ by a lovely friend when he heard that I was studying the whole question of prayer this year. And I agree: it is excellent. Having just finished ploughing through a much denser tome bringing together miles of literature and thinking on the topic, it was something of a relief to turn to this accessible page-turner. So readable is it indeed that twice I made a mistake in my knitting and had to unravel and re-knit several long rows!
God on Mute is by Pete Greig, pastor, and founder (with his wife Sammy) of the 24-7 Prayer Movement. He has a most engaging style of writing, illustrating his points with vivid accounts of real people and their lived experiences, including Sammy’s many years of epilepsy following a brain tumour diagnosed a few weeks after their second son was born.
And therein for me lies the secret. As with many other books on the subject of suffering and unanswered prayer, I am most persuaded by those people who have known real trouble, who have agonised over the questions themselves, whose trembling and sometimes tentative answers come from the crucible of pain and darkness. 
Nothing glib or hackneyed. No smooth detached academic analyses. No pious well-rehearsed platitudes. But raw, unflinching, genuine struggle to find a way through doubt and fear, leaving room still for uncertainty and mystery.
I confess I don’t share all his beliefs and conclusions – my experience and background are very different from his – but he has made me think again. Better yet, I took reams of notes which have helped enormously towards marshalling ideas into a coherent framework for my own study of this topic. A giant step forward.
A Stroke of Insight The Girl Who Came Back