I believe that one thing that sometimes hinders prayer is a fear that what we want to ask for is either too little or too big. I believe that such a fear is always mistaken.

The question I would ask is what could possibly be too big for God? He made the universe (Genesis 1). He stopped time (Joshua 10: 12-14). Paul describes God as “him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20 ESV). How, then, can anything that we ask be too big?

There are many examples of God doing things that we would see as big, but one of my favorites, partly because it is often overlooked, in the raising of the widow’s son in Nain (Luke 7:11-17). Jesus is walking into town and passes a funeral procession on its way out of town. He sees the mourning mother and walks up and raises her son. She didn’t even ask. It never even crossed her mind to ask. Of course, Mary and Martha made the same mistake before Jesus raised Lazarus, and they knew Jesus relatively well. They knew he could have healed Lazarus before he died, but it never occurred to them that he could raise him from the dead. Isn’t it wonderful that God is willing to do things that we desperately want but do not dare to ask? However, we have been encouraged to ask, so we should be more willing to dare to ask even when the request seems big to us.

However, there’s another side to this. If nothing we ask is actually big to God, then how can anything be considered small to God? I think that believing our problems are too small to bother God with is actually a bigger problem for many of us than thinking our requests are too big. However, Jesus said God numbers the hairs of our heads (Matthew 10:30). And if nothing’s big to God, then everything is small, so what leads us to think anything is too small if it matters to a person God loves?

I have built in myself a habit of praying about everything that concerns me, no matter how small it is. For example, if I’m concerned about getting an opening in the traffic as I merge on to a highway, I pray about it. For most of the “little” things I pray about, I can’t really demonstrate that God has acted on my behalf. Would traffic have opened up if I hadn’t prayed? Maybe. However, I want to tell you a story about one “little” thing that I and my whole Sunday School class prayed about a number of years ago.

First, let me set the stage. This happened back when I was working on my doctorate with two preschoolers. I was taking three classes and doing some teaching, so had to be on campus most of Monday through Wednesday as well as some time on Thursdays and Fridays. I had about a 25 minute commute to campus. My husband commuted 90 miles the other direction on Mondays and Tuesdays, though he did work from home the rest of the week. I need glasses for distances including for driving. At the time, I had exactly one pair of glasses and had not seen an optometrist since we moved to the area. And I didn’t wear contacts.

One weekend, my glasses broke: snapped in two at the nose. I’d been through this before, more than once. I was aware that we could glue them and they would hold for a day or so. We had not, at that time, found a glue that would hold for longer. And usually subsequence gluings lasted for less time. I was able to get an optometrist’s appointment for late Thursday morning, and I really couldn’t have fit anything sooner into my crazy schedule. I needed those glasses to somehow stay glued so that I could get to classes and drive safely.

So on Sunday morning I asked my Sunday School class to pray. I’m pretty sure that some of them thought I was a little crazy. We were pretty new to the class at the time, but they were the support group that I had, and they prayed. And my husband and I prayed.

The glasses did not come apart again until I was sitting in the optometrist’s office on Thursday morning, and I walked out of that office with new glasses. You think what you want, but I will always believe that God cared enough to keep my glasses together for four days because that’s what I needed and I asked.

So if you need it, however big or small it is, try asking?