To think of our prayers as just causes would suggest that the whole importance of petitionary prayer lay in the achievement of the thing asked for. But really for our spiritual life as a whole the being taken into account or considered matters more than the being granted. Religious people dont talk about the results of prayer they talk of its being answered or heard.... We can bear to be refused but not to be ignored. In other words our faith can survive many refusals if they really are refusals and not mere disregards. The apparent stone will be bread to us if we believe that a Fathers hand put it into ours in mercy or in justice or even in rebuke.