In Jesus' story, though, the neighbor stubbornly refuses the request (see Luke 11). He has already gone to bed, stretched out with his family on a mat in the one-room house – and, besides, the door is bolted shut. "Don't bother me," he calls to his neighbor outside. "I can't get up and give you anything."
A Middle Eastern audience would have laughed out loud at this lame excuse. Can you imagine such a neighbor? Jesus was asking. Certainly not! No one in my village would act so rudely. If he did, the entire village would know about it by morning!
Then Jesus delivers the punch line: "I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man's boldness [his persistence, his shamelessness] he will get up and give him as much as he needs." The application to prayer follows immediately:
So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.
Luke positions this story right after Jesus' teaching on the Lord's Prayer, drawing a sharp contrast between the reluctant neighbor and God the Father. If a cranky neighbor who has turned in for the night, who wishes more than anything you would go away, who does his best to ignore you – if such a neighbor eventually rouses to give what you want, how much more will God respond to your bold persistence in prayer! After all, what earthly father would sneak a snake under his son's pillow when he asks for a fish, or drop a scorpion on his daughter's breakfast plate instead of an egg?
The Lord's Prayer, often reduced to a mumbled ritual, an incantation, takes on new light in this story abutting it. We should pray like a salesman with his foot wedged in the door opening, like a wrestler who has his opponent in a headlock and won't let go.
The God "who watches over you will not slumber," promises a psalm of comfort. Even so, sometimes when we pray it feels as if God has indeed nodded off. Raise your voice, Jesus' story implies. Strive on, like the shameless neighbor in the middle of the night.
Keep pounding the door.
Excerpted with permission from Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? by Philip Yancey, copyright Zondervan.
* * *
No comments:
Post a Comment