A Thought For The Week Of July 25, 2016

"I tell you, even if the friend will not get up and give him anything out of friendship, yet because of the man’s persistence he will get up and give him as much as he needs." (Luke 11:8) Two things jumped into my mind as I reflected on this passage, but I would just note first that this is obviously a passage that's encouraging us to believe in the power of prayer and in the desire of God to answer our prayers. But really, what jumped into my mind was that the request that led up to the words above seemed a little bit trivial. If someone showed up unannounced at my house at midnight I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't go knocking on my neighbour's door asking to borrow food for my unexpected guest. That just seems strange to me. I understand the concept of providing hospitality - but in this case I'd really be asking my neighbour to provide the hospitality. It just strikes me as unusual. In the context of the story, of course, the neighbour is clearly in the role of God and the point being made could be that (a) there's never a bad time to approach God, and that (b) there's never a bad reason to approach God. I do note, though, that the neighbour isn't especially happy about the request. I wonder if God ever gets impatient with requests that are of less than immediate importance? Perhaps God wants us to try to solve some things on our own?  Still, God will answer prayer because of our "persistence;" because we keep approaching God. Which led to my second though. Perhaps in the end God responds in some way to even these less than crucial situations because God actually appreciates our "persistence" in coming to him over and over again. Indeed, perhaps it is to God a sign of our true faith and deep trust. And God does answer these prayers. That may be a bad idea to plant in people's minds, because sometimes we don't get what we ask for, but perhaps the most important point of the passage is made in the last few words: God will give us as much as we need. Not everything we want, but as much as we need. There's a huge difference between those two things that perhaps tells us something about what we should and shouldn't expect when we come to God in prayer: we'll always get what we need, but what we need may not always be exactly or as much as we want.