Prayer puzzle

I’m reading Philip Yancey’s “Prayer” just now and it is up to his usual high standards, posing some vital questions about how to live a life of faith and not ducking the very thorny issues which surround the subject of prayer. In one chapter he discusses the idea of prayer as a partnership between us and God, not a way of us absolving ourselves of responsibility, nor of controlling events.
When I was living in Scotland I continually returned to the mystery of prayer. We are reminded in prayer that God is far beyond our understanding and not under our control. This is partly a reaction against the excessive desire to be in charge which we have in western societies.
Here in Rwanda, I want to emphasise our responsibility. Too often, it seems, I hear the phrase “if God wills”, in a fatalistic rather than a “faith-full” spirit. I want to take people back to Genesis 1 where God makes mankind responsible for the earth and all life on it. As an example, large families and correspondingly large school fees do not just happen “because God wills” but by human action(!).
As Yancey elaborates so well, mystery and responsibility are not “either or” but “both and”. That is the persistent puzzle of prayer, if I can be excused theological alliteration.