Of course, prayer is useless unless you believe. Part of its succor is that you are delegating your problems to a higher power. The land of the nonbeliever is desert. The believer prays beside a waterfall.
The person who says a rosary conscientiously spends about forty-five minutes in prayer—a long time when you consider the average person has about sixteen waking hours a day. But for me it is time well-spent when I consider the results.
The results can be material or spiritual. To a person alert to them, they can be astounding. To see cancer go into remission with no warning, to see a person change her outlook, to see a baby arrive safely, all these results are not foreordained. Do pray.
Civilization 