Faith & Spirit Quote by William Gurnall

Gurnall writes like a man trying to keep faith afloat in the slow, unglamorous middle stretch between asking and receiving. The line is built to neutralize a corrosive suspicion common to any devout life: that prayer disappears into the ceiling and never comes back. He doesn’t argue for prayer by promising instant results; he argues for it by reframing delay as logistics. Prayer, in his metaphor, is a ship on a voyage. If it hasn’t returned, it hasn’t failed - it’s still at sea, gathering “richer lading.” The waiting isn’t a punishment; it’s an investment period.

The intent is pastoral and disciplinary. As a 17th-century Puritan divine, Gurnall is speaking to Christians trained to read providence as meaningful but also living through instability - civil war, disease, political whiplash, and the constant fear that God’s favor might be uncertain. His solution is rhetorical as much as theological: he moves prayer out of the realm of emotional catharsis and into the realm of covenantal commerce. Faithful prayer is never “lost” because the ledger is kept by God, not by your feelings.

The subtext is bracing: if you think your prayer failed, the problem isn’t God’s silence, it’s your expectation of timing. Gurnall doesn’t guarantee you’ll get the object you requested; he guarantees you’ll be “a gainer.” That’s the Puritan pivot - God answers in the currency of sanctification, not necessarily in the goods you ordered.