Ask…Seek…Knock… It sounds so easy, but I don’t always find it to be so. What do we ask for? Do we ask for the little things, or is that pestering God too much? Do we ask for the big things, or does that seem too presumptuous?
I think perhaps these are the wrong questions. Instead, I want to ask “why?” Why do we ask? Eugene Peterson (Working with Angles) reminds us that when we pray we are not the initiators. Prayer begins for us with the call of Christ – the call of Jesus on our hearts and in our lives. When I remember this, I understand that prayer is not a tool but a channel for entering into the sacred Mystery.
I don’t (or at least I’m not supposed to) pray in order to “get” something from God. I pray out of response to God’s love showered upon me and my yearning to commune with the God of Love. My faith is not in prayer; my faith is in God. That may seem obvious, but do we live as if our faith is in prayer or in God?
I believe that we are interconnected with others – all others. When I pray for someone else, I open a channel for the Divine Spirit to touch human spirits. When we pray, something happens at this deepest interconnected level – where our lives are like wicks dipped into the same bowl of oil. Through this unseen channel, love and grace flow from one to another. When I pray, I allow myself to become sensitized to God’s caring heart. That means that the more I pray for myself, a person or a situation, the more I begin to understand about me/them/situations…
In short, we don’t initiate prayer; God calls us. And God calls us into prayer to come to know God, to come to know ourselves, to grow in Spirit, and to move with love into the world. …Ask…Seek…Knock… God is already calling you to come, won’t God give you the Holy Spirit when you ask?
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