Getting What We Want

Gospel: Luke 11: 5-13

Jesus tells us plainly in this passage that God will give us whatever we ask of him.  This passage is often cited as one to provide comfort for those looking for answers and needs.  Just pray and God will provide it.  But what happens when that does not happen? The family who prays that a loved one be cured of cancer, but no cure comes.  The poor person seeking work or life in another land, only to find no work and a land inhospitable to him.  The prayers for ungranted lottery winnings and Super Bowl outcomes...

There is no easy answer to this dilemma, one that is faced each day in hospital rooms, hospice bedsides, the classrooms of small children.  To reply to someone that sometimes God's answer is no is to completely overlook what this passage is saying and what we do when we cite this passage.  Such an answer does not provide any comfort to the person in grief and in need, especially when in some instances that need can be relieved by people and by church communities that often refuse or fail to do so.  

But perhaps the simple act of entrusting ourselves to God, of coming to realize we do not control the universe or very much at all for that matter - perhaps that is the value of the exercise itself.  In coming to realize what we do have control and agency over and what we do not we grow in wisdom, we grow in our relationship with God and each other.  Let that be our takeaway, and let that be our posture as we make our way in the world as pilgrims, not permanent settlers.