7-26-19 - Ask, Seek, Knock

(You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.)

“Teach us how to pray,” Jesus’ disciples ask him. He offers a pretty solid outline. Then he switches perspective, to how God responds to our prayers. He tells a somewhat amusing story about a guy being woken up in the middle of the night by a friend in need, who responds not to the friend’s need, but to his persistence. Jesus’ punch line is, “‘So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.”

In case they didn’t get it the first time, he adds, “For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.”

Does this mean we get everything we ask for in prayer? Find everything we’re looking for? Every door we knock on is opened to us? I don’t know about your life, but mine hasn’t always gone that way. That disconnect is enough to put some people off the whole enterprise of prayer.

Prayer is not a laundry list of things we want presented to genie. Prayer is a conversation in the context of a living relationship. We make our requests because God invites us to, the same way a human parent wants her children to ask for the unicorn even if there’s no way to grant that wish – you want the conversation to reflect her heart. And you’re unlikely to give her a viper instead.

So God, the Father in heaven, Jesus suggests, wants us to ask for the desires of our hearts, wants us to seek the truth, wants us to knock on the doors separating us from holy presence. And does Jesus say we will get what we “pray for?” He goes us one better: 

“How much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!’”

Maybe that doesn't sound like a gift if you wanted healing for a loved one, or a more fulfilling job. Yet the gift of the Spirit encompasses everything:

• The Holy Spirit brings the life of God into our hearts and minds and bodies. 
• With more of the Spirit alive in us, we are so much better equipped to help bring about healing, to use our gifts at a higher level of functioning, to dwell in the kind of peace that enables us to bring joy and light into all kinds of situations. 
• The Spirit equips us for ministry and gives all kinds of other gifts… love, joy, patience, forebearance. 
• The Spirit prays through us, we are told in Romans – and you can be pretty sure God will answer a prayer that started with God.

I hope we never stop searching for God in all the places and people where God can show up. I hope we never stop knocking at the doors to truth and beauty and goodness and love and peace and joy and generosity. God’s door barely needs to be knocked at – the knock itself pushes it open, and we can walk right in.

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