Ask and You Shall Receive

It’s easy to look at today’s Gospel reading and come away with a view of God as disinterested and irritated, reluctant to give us what we need unless we bang down his door, hound him to the furthest reaches of heaven, wrench him from his reverie and force him to answer just so we’ll finally go away.

Well, that’s not what Jesus means by the parable of the friend at midnight — but it’s also not surprising that we would think that it is. The whole point of this Gospel is that communication between God and man has been broken. It’s not as easy as it once was, as it should be, as it could be.

In this parable, there exists many barriers between the supplicant and his friend. The time of day is not ideal. The door is locked. Their dispositions are opposite — one is in the middle of a REM cycle and the other is deeply agitated. They appear to be two people who are not primed to communicate well. Everything is working against them.

The same could well be said of God and the human race. Here we are in a fallen world, surrounded by sin and pain and sickness and death to the extent that it infiltrates not just our bodies but our souls, our minds, our attitudes.

We are the friend caught unprepared in the dead of night. We don’t always know how to talk to God (That door is thick! Will he hear us if we knock?). We don’t always know if we should (It’s all my fault that I ran out of loaves, after all). We don’t even know if we want to (It’s nighttime! He might be angry!).

Everything is working against us.

It doesn’t matter, Jesus tells us. Whatever is interrupting communication between your heart and the One who crafted it, the One who desires its full and irrevocable attention, it can be overcome. There is no door thick enough, no night dark enough, no sleep strong enough.

So knock.

©LPi