WFW - Prayer bowls

Another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar.
He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all the saints,
on the golden altar before the throne.
The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of the saints,
went up before God from the angel's hand.
Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar,
and hurled it on the earth;
and there came peals of thunder, rumblings ,
flashes of lightning and an earthquake.
Revelation 8: 3-5

Dave Schmelzer, in his book Not the Religious Type, brings up the concept of prayer bowls as found in the Book of Revelation. He describes the picture of a bowl filled with incense and the prayers of the saints (you and me) which, when full, is hurled on to the earth, and dramatic things happen.

Hurled...dramatic

Then Dave poses some questions and ideas...

"What if each thing we pray for has its own bowl in heaven, as it were?
And what if each prayer we pray on that subject finds its way into that bowl?
And when the bowl is full - shazam! - our prayer is answered.
And what if the bowls all have different sizes?
So let's say I have a head cold and you pray for me and I actually do feel better afterward.
On this theory, that's one size bowl, and your prayers filled it.
Let's say, conversely, that we pray for peace in the Middle East.
Can we agree that that's a bowl of a different size?
But the key thing here is that peace in the Middle East does have a bowl -
however vast, it's still finite.
So hypothetically, if we got millions and millions of people to pray about that every day,
perhaps even that bowl is fillable."

I've seen a lot of answered prayer in my life, some that I would consider pretty 'big', but I also have unanswered prayers in my prayer journal, waiting for the day when something big happens on earth and the miraculous comes to pass.

Could it be that the prayer bowls for certain unsaved friends aren't filled yet?

Or is there more to it than the size of a bowl and the number of prayers?

What do you think?

For more Word-filled Wednesday pics and scriptures, head over to Amydeanne's 160 Acre Woods.