Thursday of the First Week in Lent

 Lectionary: 227

"Ask and it will be given to you;
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.

"What's the point of praying for something if God already knows what we need and has already decided whether he'll give it to us?" 

Somehow we recognize the question's foolishness even if our reply seems lame. 

Preparing for Lent I began a study of Deuteronomy with a group of eager scholars here at Mount Saint Francis. In this last book of the Pentateuch, the incomparable Moses speaks for God as he directs the progress of the holy people through the Sinai peninsula and toward the Promised Land. He predicts a prosperous future when they faithfully heed God's commands, and doom should they disobey. His promises are matched by his threats and both must be taken very seriously. 

The nomadic wanderers often pray for food and water in the desert but their prayers are tainted by grumbling and murmuring. Despite their wonderful deliverance from slavery in Egypt, they complain that God has abandoned them as soon as their stomachs growl. Their complaint is utter nonsense: "... you have led us into this wilderness to make this whole assembly die of famine!”

They ask for God's help but they cannot ask with a confident spirit that the LORD will provide for them. Their prayers are just whining. What parent hasn't heard the same from their children? 

Moses and Jesus teach us that true reliance on God isn't passive. We should not just sit at the table and complain while our divine mother sets the food in front of us. That attitude insults the LORD and makes us ridiculous. Even as the food arrives we might earn his too familiar response, "From dirt you were made, to dirt you shall return." 

Rather, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you."

If we open our mouths to eat, we also open them to ask -- in order to receive. We will not find unless we seek. No doors will be opened until we knock. The asking, seeking, and knocking are receiving, finding, and entering. 

We're given the courage to ask even before we use it, but we must use it. That initiative comes from God. It's like the baptism most of us received long before we knew what was happening. It was a gift given despite our not asking. And it should have taught us to ask; it would have taught us had we been listening. 

Whining and absurd rationalizations like "God already knows what we need" are no substitute for prayer. 

Rather, we should respond to the stirrings of hunger, thirst, weariness, anxiety, and fear with a joyful "Come Lord Jesus!" These desires, because they are human, do not disappoint us. We should not despise them. 

But we say, "Ah! I am human, like the Lord himself! And I am hungry as he was hungry, and thirsty as he was thirsty, and frightened as he was frightened, and his God loves me because I love him! And so I ask with his confidence, knowing his Father will provide everything -- and abundantly." 

For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds;
and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
Which one of you would hand his son a stone
when he asked for a loaf of bread,
or a snake when he asked for a fish?
If you then, who are wicked,
know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will your heavenly Father give good things
to those who ask him.