Matthew 7:11 “Don’t bargain with God. Be direct. Ask for what you need. This isn’t a cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game we’re in. If your child asks for bread, do you trick him with sawdust? If he asks for fish, do you scare him with a live snake on his plate? As bad as you are, you wouldn’t think of such a thing. You’re at least decent to your own children. So don’t you think the God who conceived you in love will be even better?
The Jewish rabbis used say: Human beings can hardly hear two people talking at once, but God, if all the world talks to him at the one time, hears their cry. That challenges our imagination. Parent-child is only a metaphor for what happens in prayer.
In the very act of praying we receive something from God. As we open our hearts to God in prayer, God's hands are open to give us good gifts. We leave a time of prayer with an increase of faith, hope and love, which is the consolation of God. No time of prayer is wasted; all prayer is in the service of love, and prayer increases within us our capacity to love.
Prayer won’t win us the lottery. Nor will it save us from dying. God is not a Santa Claus who gives us just what we happen to want. Instead, the promise is that God will never give us bad things, only ‘good things’. God is infinitely good, and works for our long-range good always.
‘Do to others as you would have them do to you.’ This is the Golden Rule, however we tend to follow another Rule: the rule of tit for tat. But as Christians we must instead try to take our cue from Jesus. His goodwill toward us is not conditioned by the way people respond to him. I must try to be like God in this.
Jesus does not say that we will be given precisely what we ask for; or that we will find exactly what we are looking for; or that the particular door we want will be opened to us. But we will receive ‘good things’!
He says that we will not ask without receiving what God knows is best for us. We will not seek without finding what God knows we most need. We will not knock without having the most worthwhile way opened to us. Can I trust in this radical goodness of God?
I know, Lord, that you always hear my cry, but I do not always understand your answer. I will still go on praying to you. Amen
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