But as one was felling a log, his ax head fell into the water; he cried out, "Alas, master! It was borrowed." - 2 Kings 6.5

In his novel The Marquis of Lossie, George MacDonald describes the spiritual state of an artist: 

 "He was not altogether innocent of saying prayers; but of late it had grown a more formal and    gradually a rarer thing. One reason for this was that it had never come into his head that God cared about pictures, or had the slightest interest in whether he painted well or ill. If a man's earnest calling, to which of necessity the greater part of his thought is given, is altogether disassociated in his mind from his religion, it is not altogether wonderful that his prayers should by degrees wither and die."

A borrowed hatchet blade might have seemed too small a thing to bring to the prophet who had parted the Jordan, but it was, at that moment, the biggest thing in this young man's world. Iron was a new technology, and thus expensive: Imagine accidentally flinging a friend's new smart phone into the local swimming pool! The hapless construction worker does not weigh the worth of his request in the balances of Elisha's greater prophetic calling; he bleats out a heart-felt cry for help with what most touches his life at that moment.

The result is of more than immediate economic impact. Elisha reveals the power of a God who reverses nature's expected order: iron floats; what naturally sinks to the bottom suddenly surges to the surface. The God who creates the world cares about a contractor's balance sheet. This prefigures Jesus, who revealed a God who puts the last first and cares when a sparrow dies. 

Christians often sensor our prayers because logic sneers that God has better things to do. As a result, our prayers wither and die by degrees. As Dallas Willard notes, "Prayer simply dies from efforts to pray about 'good things,' that honestly do not matter to us. The way to get to meaningful prayer for those good things is to start by praying for what we are truly interested in. The circle of our interests will inevitably grow in the largeness of God's love."

So pray about what touches you; God will find a means of greater revelation in responding to that small request, and your soul will grow larger so that it may be touched by greater things.