If you then, who are wicked,
know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit
to those who ask him?
We saw yesterday that the fact that God is our Father was meant to be the context for our prayer, the core truth that gave it shape and motivation. Today we see this again as Jesus further explicates the life of prayer.
Jesus anticipated that we would run into discouragement when praying, feeling as though we reached a dead end or a door that had "already been locked". It might seem to us, Jesus knew, that God had made himself comfortable with those children that actually mattered to him, sending us away as nothing but annoyances.
‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked
and my children and I are already in bed.
I cannot get up to give you anything.’
If God really were a merely mortal human, the father of a nearby family, we could perhaps eventually get through to him how much we needed his help. We could keep knocking until he came to realize that he wasn't going to be gaining any additional rest or comfort until he came to our assistance. But it is not as though we can actually bother God into doing something that he does not intend. So it seems that the message is that however much we might think of our insistence and repetition as annoying or excessive in human terms we ought to continue to pursue our requests anyway, since they are not so from God's perspective. He isn't too comfortable to move. He isn't immobile because of insurmountable indifference. Jesus knew we would be tempted to give up, and the pursuing our request would require us to go above and beyond what would be comfortable in a human relationship. That is why it is so important for us to remember that God is better, not only than our neighbors, but even our own earthly fathers, more even than the best and the most perfect among them, and he desires to give us good things.
And I tell you, ask and you will receive;
seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks, receives;
and the one who seeks, finds;
and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
The point is that the only way we will be able to prayer constantly without losing heart is if we remember that God is our Father, different from human beings, the origin of all fatherhood (see Ephesians 3:15). His reasons for desiring us to ask and keep asking are not those of one who is lazy or indifferent. Whatever he it is precisely that he desires to do within our hearts and in the world it is something that he in fact desires more than we do. He wants to give good gifts. But it does also seem that he desires to give it in and through those children of his who trust him enough to pursue them.
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