Day 1: I install new wallpaper in the foyer.

Day 2: The first thing I notice after rolling out of bed is how nice it looks and how it changed the room.

Day 3: Sometime in the afternoon I admire my handiwork.

Day 4 and beyond: I hardly notice the wallpaper. Been there. Done that. Old news.

And unfortunately, it's the same when it comes to news of human suffering. It's embarrassing but true.

The first time I read about sex trafficking I was haunted for days.

When I heard about a reporter beheaded in the Middle East, I lost sleep for a couple nights.

I cried for the victims of the earthquake in Japan.

And when the Heath High School shooting occurred in 1997 I could barely step away from the television for a week.

But now - in 2011?

Another shooting? How terrible. What's for lunch?

I'm just being honest here. Are you the same?

See, suffering is like what Os Guinness calls the "wallpaper of the 'way life is.'"

In other words, we've been there and done that. It's an always present fixture in our lives and one we hardly glance at the more times we walk by.

And then, we have the audacity to minimize prayer. How important could it be, really? And, I often don't know what to pray about anyway.

We use "I don't know what to pray about" as an excuse. But if we open our eyes, even a little, the targets of prayer are limitless.

Pray for the 12-year-old girl chained to a bed in South Thailand - raped by fifteen men a day.

Pray for the guy up the road who lost his job and it looks like he'll lose the house.

Pray for the man who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and can't find a way to tell his wife and four kids.

See, there's no end.

The issue isn't the amount of good "prayer material" out there. The issue is we don't believe.

We don't believe God will actually do something when we pray.

We think He's in charge, He knows what He's doing, and if He wants to do something for the girl held captive He will, with or without our prayers.

But it's not entirely true.

Harold Lindsell said it like this:

"God cannot do some things unless we work. He stores the hills with marble, but He has never built a cathedral. He fills the mountains with iron ore, but He never makes a needle or a jet airplane. He leaves that to us. If, then, God has left many things dependent on man's thinking and working, why should He not leave some things dependent on man's praying? We cannot suppose that God will do for us without prayer what He has promised to do for us only through prayer."

Prayer works and there is no limit to its need.

When prayer comes with difficulty, pray for the wallpaper.

And then, put feet to your prayers. With your time, energy, and resources, do what you can, when you can, to bring change. Be the answer to someone else's prayers.

"Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and He brought them out of their distresses. He caused the storm to be still, so that the waves of the sea were hushed. Then they were glad because they were quiet, so He guided them to their desired haven." Psalm 107:28-30 (NASB)