Reflection for 10/12/17

“And I tell you, ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”  This is a commonly quoted passage in Scripture, but I also think that it is one of the most misunderstood passages in Sacred Scripture.  We are told that if we ask, we will receive.  What will we receive?  If we seek, we will find.  What will we find?  If we knock, the door will be opened to us.  What will be behind the door?  Sometimes this passage is used to explain that God will grant us whatever we ask for in prayer, like a genie grants wishes, but we lose sight of the fact that God is not a genie.  God does not necessary do what we ask just because we ask it.  Anyone who has prayed for anything knows the truth of this statement.

 

So then, the question remains, what will we receive, what will we find, and what will be behind the door?  We are not privy to know the answer to those questions.  All we can do is ask for what we need, we can seek what we desire, and we can hope to find who it is we are searching out behind the door.  The answer to our prayers is not always what we want to hear, but what Jesus tells us is that we can be certain that the answer to our prayers will be what we need to hear, in fact it will be greater than we can possibly imagine.

 

“If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”  When we give gifts for birthdays and Christmas and special occasions, we usually try to give gifts that people want.  We ask them for the things that they desire prior to the occasion, and we purchase gifts based on that, but God does not need to ask us what we want in order for him to know what we need.  We may want one thing, but the gift that God will give us is so much more than whatever we might ask for because the gift that God gives us is his very Spirit—the Holy Spirit.

 

Let us trust in the Lord when we bring our petitions before him.  Let us trust that God knows what we need more clearly than we do, and God will never give us a gift that will not benefit us in some way.