The futility of prayer, Part 2

There is a moving final scene in Stephen MacDonald’s wonderful play about the friendship between Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, Not About Heroes. With only a week to go before the Armistice was signed on 11 November 1918, at 5:45 on the morning of 4 November, Wilfred Owen’s Company led the crossing of the Sambre Canal. His men remember him, going among them, encouraging them, joking with them. He began to help them to fix some duckboards at the edge of the water. That’s where he was machine-gunned to death. MacDonald continues (1987, p. 79):

The Armistice was signed exactly one week later... At eleven o’clock, the fighting stopped. At twelve o’clock, the victory bells were ringing out in Shrewsbury. Bands were playing, crowds cheering. His mother and father began, in gratitude, to pray. Then the telegram arrived.

The futility of prayer, Part 1

In this “What I'm really thinking” column (accessed 20.11.11), a terminally ill patient writes: “I can count my real friends on the two fingers that I'd like to raise to the rest of them”:

Then there's, “But I pray for you every day.” Every day? Does your compassionate God not tell you that he's heard your prayers before, to stop repeating yourself, get up off your knees, pick up the phone and talk to me instead?