How persistent is your prayer?
The Bible is replete with examples of persistence in prayer. In the Book of Genesis, Abraham, God’s friend, converses freely with the Lord, to the point of challenging God’s plan to punish the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for their grave sin. Abraham seeks to understand divine justice, and so he asks the Lord: Will you sweep away the innocent with the guilty? Abraham’s persistent prayer is that God will show mercy even if only fifty or thirty or even just ten innocent people remain in Sodom, and in the end, God capitulates, For the sake of those ten, I will not destroy it. God answers Abraham’s prayer, as in Psalm 138: Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me.
In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus similarly encourages his disciples to persistence in prayer, giving them the words they need – Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come – and sharing with them the parable of the man who is persistent in his efforts to convince his friend to give him the food he requires for a guest. But it’s not enough to be persistent in our asking – Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, Jesus says – we must also be persistent in our efforts to understand God’s answer. Prayer is an essential component of our relationship with the Lord, and it involves listening as well as speaking, that we might come to know God’s will for us, and respond to God’s ongoing invitations.
Prayer is also essential to our ever-deepening awareness of all that the death and rising of Jesus was meant to reveal, and to our ever-deepening appreciation of the relationship we have with the Lord thanks to that dying and rising. You were buried with him in baptism, Paul tells the Colossians, in which you were also raised with him. Mosaic law kept people from true relationship with God; thanks to Jesus, who nailed the law to the cross, we are now free to live that relationship more fully. We do that first and foremost through persistent communication as we open ourselves daily to the Lord in prayer, as Jesus taught us, for, as he assures his disciples, to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Only then can true intimacy begin.
This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com
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