I'm in an online bookclub from Zondervan Publishing called Zondervan's Breakfast Club.  Each weekday they e-mail an exerpt from a book.  This week's book is Prayer :  Does It Make Any Difference? by Philip Yancey.  Here are a few passages from today's portion.  You can sign up at www.zondervan.com.

I write about prayer as a pilgrim, not an expert. I have the same
questions that occur to almost everyone at some point. Is God
listening? Why should God care about me? If God knows everything,
what's the point of prayer? Why do answers to prayer seem so
inconsistent, even capricious? Does a person with many praying
friends stand a better chance of physical healing than one who also
has cancer but with only a few people praying for her? Why does God
sometimes seem close and sometimes faraway? Does prayer change God
or change me?

In my travels I have noticed that
Christians in developing countries spend less time pondering the
effectiveness of prayer and more time actually praying. The wealthy
rely on talent and resources to solve immediate problems, and
insurance policies and retirement plans to secure the future. We can
hardly pray with sincerity, "Give us this day our daily bread" when
the pantry is stocked with a month's supply of provisions.

I investigate the topic of prayer as a pilgrim, strolling about, staring at the
monuments, asking questions, mulling things over, testing the
waters.

If prayer stands as the place where God and human beings meet, then
I must learn about prayer. Most of my struggles in the Christian
life circle around the same two themes: why God doesn't act the way
we want God to, and why I don't act the way God wants me to. Prayer
is the precise point where those themes converge.