Unanswered prayer is a genuine part of Christian experience — not a failure of faith. Many of the tidy explanations we reach for turn out to be exactly the arguments Job's friends made, and God doesn't vindicate them. What the lesson largely misses is lament — a legitimate, biblical response to things going badly. Elijah after Mount Carmel is a fascinating case: he prays to die, and God's response is neither an explanation nor a rebuke, but food, rest, and a path forward.