(Audio)
“It is not right to take the food of the children
and throw it to the dogs.”
What do we do when our prayers aren't answered immediately? Do we give up right away? We imagine all the reasons why the LORD might choose not to answer our prayers. These reasons sound every bit as convincing as hearing Jesus say, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." They seem definitive, with no room for argument. So we have the habit of praying that our prayers be answered if they be the will of God. This would be OK, but we quickly forget the prayers if they aren't answered right away.
But prayer involves persistence. We are meant to persevere.
She said, “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps
that fall from the table of their masters.”
Jesus taught the lesson of persistence in the parable of the widow and the unjust judge. The judge eventually gave in, saying, "Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming" (see Luke 18:4-5). He taught the same lesson when he instructed us to ask and keep asking, to seek and keep seeking, and to knock and keep knocking (see Matthew 7:7 from the Amplified Bible).
Even if we feel that God is indifferent to our prayers, or we fear that they might not be part of his plans, or even if we doubt that he cares, even so we should keep on asking for the things that matter to us. Prayer is meant to be an exercise of faith. It is meant to be a direct connection to the fulfillment promised by God before we can see it, even as time stretches out before us making it seem impossible.
Then Jesus said to her in reply,
“O woman, great is your faith!
Let it be done for you as you wish.”
And her daughter was healed from that hour.
God does not really need us to tell him what is wrong and needs fixing down here on earth. But he delights for us to do so. When we do his concerns become our own more and more. It is not God who is changed, but ourselves. And because this typically takes time we must persist. Perhaps we really are asking for something which it is not God's will to grant in the way we ask. If we persist with it in prayer eventually our heart will change and we will begin to desire more and more what God desires it in the way he desires it.
We should believe that our breakthrough is just around the corner, that it could happen at any moment. We shouldn't slip into the temptation of praying only safe prayers that can't disappoint because they are so distant in the future. The LORD may appear to us from afar, but the love with which we are loved is "an age-old love" and his mercy toward us has never been abandoned. When we learn to know the reality of this love, this favor even in the desert, we learn confidence that the LORD will indeed give us the rest we seek, the joy for which we long.
For thus says the LORD:
Shout with joy for Jacob,
exult at the head of the nations;
proclaim your praise and say:
The LORD has delivered his people,
the remnant of Israel.
Michael Joncas - I Have Loved You
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