Persistence in Prayer

The Gospel reading (Luke 11:1-13) reminds us to be persistent in discipleship: persistent in prayer; persistent in bringing our case and the needs of the world before God. The model of what we know as the Lord’s Prayer is provided. So does God need our persistence, or is this something about the need to us to continually be enfolded in the persistence of God?

Prayer can so often be understood as our asking God to do something for us or others; but does God really need us to tell God what to do?

My absolute favourite chapter in the scriptures is Romans 8. That chapter reminds us that it is the Spirit who prays through us, and that the act of prayer is God’s action of joining our wills to God’s purpose. It is God’s activity of forming us as God’s people and enfolding us into God’s mission in the world.

26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.

In the face of God’s persistent, we are called to persistence in opening ourselves to God in prayer for God to work in and through us.

Seeking One, you are the beginning and the end of our search.
Finding One, you are the alpha and omega of all discovery.
Asking One, you are the voice and the silence of our exploration.
Giving One, you are the fullness and the emptiness of all yearning.
Persistent One, you never abandon your search for us,
nor tire of our repetitive toings and froings.
Receiving One, you endlessly welcome us home,
and spread before us a feast
in the face of our constant requests for mere morsels of bread.

Search us, O God, and find within us the secrets we hide.
Ask us, O God, and receive from within us the pain we bear.
Keep knocking at the door of our lives
until we open our wills to your purpose,
our lives to your life, and our yearning to your hope. Amen.