Readings:
Esther 4:17; Psalm 138; Matthew 7:7-12

Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Ask, and it will be given to you, search, and you will find, knock, and the door will be opened to you. For the one who asks always receives, the one who searches always finds, the one who knocks will always have the door opened. Is there a man among you who would hand his son a stone when he asked for bread? Or would hand him a snake when he asked for a fish? If you, then, who are evil, know how to give your children what is good, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him! So always treat others as you would like them to treat you; that is the meaning of the Law and the Prophets.
Matthew 7.7-11

I have sometimes wondered whether the Gospel writers did not slip up on this passage, which should have read ‘Ask and it will not be given to you!’

Christians are divided over the need and value of petitionary prayer, some being obsessive petitioners, as though God is very absent-minded and, if not constantly prompted, will forget to notice our needs and those of our friends, others abandon petitionary prayer altogether because they reckon God already knows our needs. Yet the Gospels are clear, ‘Ask and it will be given to you’, and there is no possibility of a misprint! In fact, Jesus recommends that we pester God like the widow who pesters the judge, or the man who wakes up his friend in the middle of the night, asking for bread, ‘I tell you, if the man does not get up and give it him for friendship’s sake, persistence will be enough to make him get up and give his friend all he wants’ (Luke 11:8).

But petitionary prayer does raise questions: what am I expecting God to do when I pray? For example, I pray before a train journey. Am I asking God to tighten up any loose bolts which the maintenance engineers may have overlooked, or to sharpen up the driver’s reflexes, make good any defects in the points system? And when we pray for others, are we asking God to suspend nature’s laws for the sake of our friends, that Fred’s liver should not, after all, be ruined by the alcohol he has consumed? I am sure many a fervent prayer is sent up to God when people post their football pools. Is God expected to steer errant balls into various nets to comply with instructions from below?

The point of petitionary prayer is not that we should receive precisely what we ask for, but that through petitionary prayer we acknowledge and deepen our dependence on God, and also, by putting our requests into words, we gradually learn to sift our real needs from our wants. When I pray for a safe journey, to win the pools, or for a sick friend, I am praying for the enrichment of my own and other people’s lives, praying for my good and their good.

When we reflect on our own lives, we realize the difficulty we have in distinguishing our wants from our needs. We feel we need more money, success, popularity. If they come, they bring further problems: if they do not come, and we can still keep trusting in God, we can begin to learn wisdom, that the lack of money can teach us to appreciate our need of inner wealth, of peace of mind and inner contentment, that our failure to achieve and be approved by others has freed us from living to meet other people’s expectations into living in obedience to the deeper promptings of our hearts. It is in those deeper promptings that we can find the will of God, who wills our good more than we can ever do.

Prayer
God, give us a childlike trust that we live enfolded in your goodness, that in every event, in every encounter, no matter how dark or disappointing it may be to us, you are there, protecting, welcoming, cherishing and leading us to you. We ask you this through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.