Growing Young Again ...

 

For us, time only moves one direction, forward.  Once the past is past, it cannot be undone or altered.  This is how we know life to be, usually to our great regret.  And as time moves on, we age, always growing only older.  2yr-olds turn into 4yr-olds, 20 becomes 30, 50 becomes 60, and before you know it, you are facing your own mortality up close and personal.  Mind you the distance between 2-years-old and 60 is what we describe as a lifetime.  But in truth, it is not.  All of our years here are but a drop in the bucket, perhaps not even as much as a drop more like a molecule, and perhaps instead of a bucket, an entire ocean.  There comes a life to those who believe that becomes nearly impossible to measure in years, for too many years pass by.  The idea of eternity is hard for the human mind to grasp.  We are too bound in the present, where our life expectancy is set before we are born, where reaching the age of 90 in relatively good health is considered an achievement.  To reach a 100 is so rare it is worthy of press attention, beyond that is hardly something people will even believe.  And in the context of eternity, 100 years old is barely a half a second, or a single blink of an eye.  When time has no end, time becomes less meaningful.  But perhaps the most striking element of eternity for believers is how it begins, not with the dissolution of time itself, but with a change in direction of how we grow.

No, this is not the story of Benjamin Button.  In fact this is not fantasy of any kind.  It is truism.  It is realism.  It descends from the mouth of Jesus Christ Himself.  And as a believer you will come to know the truth of it in your own life.  To actually grow backwards.  Let me give you a small taste.  When you were a toddler, chances are you trusted your parents to completely take care of everything you needed.  As a toddler you had NO idea how they did that.  For that matter, as a toddler you never even gave those thoughts a moment of time in your toddler brain.  They just were.  Or rather, life just was.  It did not need definition.  And your thoughts might then have been pre-occupied only with the basics – am I hungry, or tired, or in need of affection, or play.  And no matter which of these needs or any other your mind might stumble across, your parents were the ones to meet that need.  Sometimes they were good enough to anticipate them.  To feed you before you even knew you were hungry.  To hold you because they needed it, even if you were already comfortable that you were loved.  Parents did for you, because you were loved by them.

Now extend the example to how God interacts with you today.  If you let Him, God will be that parent for you in every single aspect of your life.  When you are hungry, God knows it.  And He promises to meet the needs of today as they arise.  He does not promise to stock your pantry forevermore, but does promise to provide the bread you need as you need it each day.  Sometimes it is hard to wrap your adult brain around even one simple gesture of trust.  But if you can allow it.  You will witness the actions of a loving parent where your life is concerned.  And engaging in this kind of trust–fulfillment–trust cycle only builds trust in you in who God is, and how God is, with you personally.  You begin to see His parental instincts are worlds ahead of your own, or of your own parents.  And the worry of this life abates, and you are made free to think on other things.  The stress of survival begins to recede, and what emerges is the freedom to play more, enjoy more, and spend more time with Dad.  You find Dad was just longing to do that with you all along, and He will make the time, to do it.  In fact, He has already set aside one day in seven, just to mark out some special play time with you.

Having the freedom NOT to worry, is an anti-adult thing.  It is a child-like thing.  And it is only the beginning of your journey.  Luke wrote about it in the 18^th chapter of his gospel letter to his friend about what we believe and why.  He picks up with the incident that outlines the roadmap to this in verse 15 saying … “And they brought unto him also infants, that he would touch them: but when his disciples saw it, they rebuked them.”  This is typical adult behavior.  The Jewish people believed strongly in blessings.  And to be blessed you needed to make physical contact with the person blessing you.  It took the laying on of hands to be precise.  No remote blessings.  No dialing it in.  The person doing the blessing would typically put his hands on your head, and then the prayers and blessings would begin to flow.  Extra special blessings might involve pouring olive oil on your head while the blessing was uttered.  But these parents just wanted a quick blessing from the Rabbi, or rather the Prophet, or rather the possible Messiah, or perhaps the miracle worker they had all witnessed him perform.  It was a good idea.

But the disciples had begun to think of themselves as more serious people, as a quasi-guardian of access to Jesus.  Imagine that, the first most prominent followers of Jesus, soon took their own access to Jesus as a sign they should limit the access of others, instead of trying to bring others to Christ.  Sound familiar?  Does that plague continue to persist today?  Where someone close to Jesus begins to move away from welcoming all to the foot of the cross, to trying to pre-sort the ones that are able to come at all.  And think about it, we adults are serious people.  We already know stuff.  We are capable of hearing, learning, and decided what stuff means.  We have no time for crying babies, or cute toddlers.  They can’t figure all this adult stuff out.  They are incapable.  So why should we waste our time with them.  Only the serious need apply.  Only the capable need even try.  Little ones are neither of those.  Little ones are obsessed with only one thing – they like to play.  There is NO time for playing in church.  There is NO time to try to distract Jesus with cute stuff.  Keep the cute stuff at home, appreciate it there, and don’t bother Jesus in church with any of these antics.  We have no time for that.

But Jesus had other ideas as Luke continues in verse 16 saying … “But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. [verse 17] Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.”  Hold up, wait a minute, Jesus is flipping time and growth on their heads.  Instead of serious, Jesus plans to make time for the little children.  Jesus is going to make time for cute, for play, for love, for affection.  Yes we all know Jesus is busy, there is an entire world to save, there are so many to heal, to feed, to preach to.  But put ALL of that on pause for a moment.  Something more important has come up.  A little child wants access to Jesus.  And Jesus is going to stop it all, make time, and fulfill that need.  Serious is out the window.  Reverent has been tossed out of the play-yard.  Jesus will enter instead.  But Jesus takes it a whole world farther than anyone – parent, or disciple – could have ever anticipated.  Jesus declares that the entire Kingdom of God (not just a part of it, but the whole of it) is made up of little babies and toddlers like these kids.  What does that mean?  Adult minds are scrambling now to figure that out.  Adult minds are racing to figure out a new doctrine that runs counter to every bit of wisdom they have been taught, and still they have no clue what it means.

It gets worse.  Jesus ups the ante.  Jesus further declares that all us adults are never getting in to the Kingdom until we learn to receive that gift and embrace it like one of these non-serious, heavy playing, heavy loving little toddlers does.  Not just bad enough that people in the Kingdom are like these kids, people cannot even get inside until they become like one of these kids.  Adult minds just begin to collapse at that declaration.  And shouldn’t they?  Give this thought a minute to sink in, in your own mind.  Jesus is asking for more than just baby-talk you might do with your spouse behind closed doors, or with your small children on the floor while you are playing with them.  He is not asking you to act young.  He is asking you to be young, to grow backwards, to lose adulthood in favor of the trust and love of a young toddler who never even thinks about “adult” things.  Toddlers have no time for that.  It would seem what there is time for is completely upside down when seen through the eyes of Jesus.

At this point, the self-appointed-guardians of access to Jesus, have backed up and gone nuts.  They have opened the floodgates of little ones jumping right into the welcoming arms of Jesus.  They don’t know why.  They heard Jesus describe the Kingdom as made up of these.  But the idea that they have to become like these to ever get in – is beyond them.  That is impossible.  That defies physics, and history, and everything we know about life.  It is upside down world.  So how could we possibly make that happen?  It would seem we are all doomed.  It would get worse, before it would get better.  To drive home the point about how this could ever happen, the story continues picking back up in verse 18 saying … “And a certain ruler asked him, saying, Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? [verse 19] And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God. [verse 20] Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother.”

Now this was someone the disciples could equate to, perhaps to aspire to.  A rich young ruler, an adult, who was obviously blessed by God, as witnessed by his wealth.  He comes to Jesus asking how he might be saved.  This answer should obviously clean up that whole be a kid thing.  First Jesus redirects the false flattery back to God who alone deserves it.  Then the first words of Jesus are not about being a kid, they are about keeping the law of Moses.  Finally!  These are words the entire Jewish nation will understand.  Keeping the law is engrained in the DNA.  You keep it, or you are lost.  Period.  No other requirements.  Being a kid, is for kids, this Law stuff is for serious people, for adults who are able to understand it.  The story continues in verse 21 saying … “And he said, All these have I kept from my youth up. [verse 22] Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me.”  You see, the serious adult has kept the law from when he was a child up.  Maybe that is what Jesus meant about being a kid, that even non-serious kids better keep the law or else.  But that was not to be.

The answer of Jesus was now even more disturbing and for many reasons.  He tells the rich young ruler, to go and sell everything he owns, for “treasure in heaven”.  Then He follows by inviting him to become the thirteenth male disciple.  Hey wait a minute, I thought only 12 were allowed.  They needed to be paired up for ministry, and 12 was like the number 12 of the tribes of Israel.  Isn’t there some numerical significance to that number, why are we about to open it up to 13 instead?  That makes no sense.  But Jesus is right there about to increase their number, so much for pairing up in evangelism.  Maybe Jesus will invite another one to make it 14.  But putting aside the whole number fiasco.  Jesus asks the rich young ruler to do something ONLY a trusting child could ever do.  To give it all away, and trust, and follow – and not know a single thing more than that.  No road map.  No plan.  No agenda.  Just throw all the cares of money to the wind to care for the poor (and in so doing perhaps help the poor to heaven, thereby increasing the only real treasure in heaven there would ever be), and go and be made free in the doing.

So the whole kid thing has not gone out the window with answer of Jesus.  It is worse.  Jesus is pointing out that keeping the Law given to Moses is only a start.  What is really important is giving your entire trust to Him, losing everything you own, and becoming a toddler disciple with no clue what will happen next.  Your need to know is shot.  You are not going to be told.  When it is time you will know, not before.  And keeping the Law, or having wealth, does not shield you from the need to trust, and to give it all away.  The story picks back up in verse 23 saying … “And when he heard this, he was very sorrowful: for he was very rich. [verse 24] And when Jesus saw that he was very sorrowful, he said, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God! [verse 25] For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”  Oh no.  Jesus has just doomed all of their aspirations.  In addition, He just made it impossible for an entire class of people to ever see the inside of the Kingdom of God.  Good thing Nicodemus and Joseph were not here to hear this, it might have depressed them to death.  And every other member of the Sanhedrin.  All of them doomed.  If Peter ever became a successful fisherman, he too might be doomed.  Good thing he was only ever so-so at it.

But this response of Jesus to once again defy physics, and reverse everything we know about religion and life was perplexing more than just the disciples this time.  Luke picks back up in verse 26 saying … “And they that heard it said, Who then can be saved? [verse 27] And he said, The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.”  And there it is, the methodology of our salvation spelled out in terms both adult mind and child mind can easily understand.  We don’t do it.  We cannot do it.  We cannot reverse time or physics.  We are not supposed to.  We are supposed to trust that even though we are unable to save ourselves, that Jesus and God are able, and will do that very thing.  What is in fact, impossible for us, is possible for God.  Where our spiritual maturity has thus far been measured in how serious we adult-minds have become – is now to be turned on its head and go backwards – more trust, more play, more love – less stress, less worry, less trying to figure everything out.  We are to lose our need to know, and to just be.  Be free.  Play with Dad.  Enjoy His hugs.  Share His blessings.  Push His love to us outwards, and sideways, to everyone with no limitations – just like a group of toddlers will do. 

We don’t grow backwards into toddlers of His kingdom because we “act” like them, but because we become them.  We cannot act our way into heaven.  We cannot perform the duties required to get into heaven.  We must instead become different people, much younger people, with absolute trust, and a freedom we have yet to experience.  To leave everything up to God, is invigorating, renewing, and freeing beyond all measure.  We stop needing to know “how” God does it, we just need to know He does.  And life and history teach that too.  Our minds then, need not be so serious, but instead be trusting and loving.  Keeping His law then will come not because we will it, or think we do, but because He creates obedience in us, as a natural state of who we become.  And as pointed out here, that is only the beginning.  We will grow into a state of wild abandon with Jesus.  Willing to give up every single thing we own.  Trusting in Dad to meet every need, and watching Dad do exactly that and more.  We can grow backwards, and grow younger, not because it is possible for us, but because it is possible for God, and God does it for us, in us, and through us.  Sit back my toddler friends, time to let Dad take over, and enjoy the ride.

 

Confidence unto Death ...

 

I must admit this whole thing with Trump contracting Covid-19 has hit me harder than I expected.  I am no fan of Trump.  I wanted to be.  There was a time I started out that way.  I hoped his brash style, and willingness to be completely devoid of any political skills would carry him into the White House where he would demand “both” political parties to come to the table and compromise, make deals, and get things done.  I had never seen a candidate for President actually answer a question before, without thinking about it, without planning what the right thing to say was, but instead just say what he thought.  Unheard of, unprecedented, it gave me high hopes.  I had hoped that through his wealth he would be obligated to none, and able to do the people’s business, for the benefit of all the people, pulling back both Republican and Democratic extremism into a centrist agenda that would leave our nation the greatest it had ever been.  But that was not to be.  Instead he pursued a strategy as far right as anyone in history.  He catered to his base and centrism was dead upon arrival.  Mea culpa.  But having the President of our country contract a potentially fatal disease is quite another matter.  That just makes me sad.  Does not matter that it is Trump in whom I am so disappointed, only that yet another victim has been struck with a pestilence of these end times.

We are more than 7 million American souls who have thus far been struck with Covid-19.  More than 200,000 Americans dead.  This disease is real, here, in our home.  And the scariest stories I have heard are the ones describing a new term “long haulers” that experience horrific symptoms for long periods of time well after the virus is supposed to have left their systems.  Talk about pre-existing conditions.  The irony of course, is that President Trump exhibited so much confidence where it came to public displays of how to deal with life during the pandemic.  While science, and doctors who specialize in this field, settled on advice of wearing masks to cut down risks, Trump kept right on doing what he thought was appropriate.  Rallies unabated.  The death of Herman Cain after Oklahoma did not give a moment’s pause.  But as it turns out confidence is irrelevant where it comes to battling pandemics.  Practicality matters, confidence does not.  And so many look at this event and think to themselves, he deserved it, for making bad decisions.  Well no one deserves it.  And anyone is at risk from it.  Covid is something that happens to you, often in spite of what you do.  And so the tragedy lingers on.

But for me the analogy of battling a pandemic with an air of self-confidence the world is not meant to shake, is the same tragedy that infects the modern churches of the Christian faith today.  “We” are so certain about what we believe, and equally confident that others are both wrong, and lost because of it.  Certainty in Jesus is admirable, we should all aspire to that.  But that is about “Who” we believe in.  Our confidence extends far past the who, into the what, and the how.  So many Christian denominations have Trumpian confidence about what doctrines they hold to.  They wind up creating walls of division between one Christian faith and another.  These doctrinal walls that divide us become matters of right and wrong, of saved vs lost, and we hold his confidence that we are always on the right side of all of these issues.  As if Jesus loves those less who believe in Him, but carry the wrong interpretations of scripture, and are too proud to let them go.  We begin to assess the love of Jesus as being partial to those who have the other things right as well.  We start to change the basis of salvation from a belief in Jesus, to a belief in Jesus followed by a series of beliefs only our church espouses.  And every church I know is guilty of this, my own perhaps most especially.  We have become Trump battling the pandemic with self-confidence, but for us it is our church battling the pandemic of sin with the self-confidence of certainty in our own wisdom,

Feeling good about your beliefs is not something new.  That plague has been with humanity for a very long time, and appears to be both hereditary and extraordinarily contagious.  Consider for a moment the parable Luke recorded on this topic in chapter eighteen of his gospel letter to his friend about what we believe and why.  Luke records Jesus speaking picking up in verse 9 saying … “And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:”  Or if you will allow, Jesus speaks this particular parable to every modern Church of the Christian faith today in the decade of the 2020’s.  For who of us does not already trust in ourselves, that we are righteous.  And because we are righteous, we must by definition hate all those who are not like us.  Come to hate those who do not share our faith, or our actions.  We despise sinners of all shapes and varieties.  But most of all we come to despise those who believe in other faiths that claim Jesus, because they refuse to relent what they believe where it differs from our own beliefs.  We do not just divide the body of Christ, we obliterate it into tiny tiny pieces, such that the smallest toe nail is no longer connected to the toe it came from.  And we despise the nail for going its own way, and not coming back to the fold it is from.  And now who is even able to see Jesus in His followers for so many harbor the confidence of Trump, with the extremism of certainty in their own beliefs at the expense of all others.

Jesus addressed this crowd back then, and now as it continues in verse 10 saying … “Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. [verse 11] The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. [verse 12] I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.”  Confidence you see, does not just exist between one faith and another, it can exist between one believer and another within the confines of the same church.  In this parable the faith is a constant, the church is a constant.  But the idea that one could have less “need” of God compared to another still existed.  A plague that has in no way diminished over time or become less potent.  The Pharisee was a church leader.  And the Pharisee deemed himself righteous because of what he did and did not do.  The Pharisee examined his own behavior and determined he was NOT an extortioner.  Interesting he picks this first.  Further the Pharisee’s self-assessment was that he was NOT unjust.  Nor was he an adulterer.  And lastly the Pharisee was not a betrayer of his nation, by submitting himself to Rome and collecting taxes for those who believed only in the pagan gods like the publican does who caught his eye.

By contrast, the Pharisee did what scripture demanded.  He fasted twice a week.  I imagine he was not over-weight with this practice.  And he gave tithes of everything he possessed.  Monetarily, unlike the publicans who were ever known for their greedy cheating ways, the Pharisee gave 10 percent of every single thing he owned, as scripture demands.  Except of course his heart, there was no ten percent offering made there, or any other percentage.  But to the Pharisee, there was no need of that.  He was righteous because of what he did, of how he lived, his heart was his own.  Sympathy never entered his thinking.  Imagine if he instead would have seen his publican brother enter the Temple, and had run to his side to encourage him, welcome him, open his heart and his home to him.  Perhaps his prayer would have been totally different.  Perhaps it might have been something like … “I thank you Lord for my publican brother who I love so much.  Thank you for bringing him here today to commune with you at your side, and for giving me the opportunity to share that communion with him, and perhaps have the two of us go out into the community to find those in need, who we can continue to lift your name up to, meet their needs, and find joy in the serving.”  Imagine the chance for sharing that was lost in this encounter as Jesus described it.  Imagine the opportunity in this world, at that moment, that was lost to love someone who so clearly needed it.  Publicans were shunned by society, by the average believers, let alone by church leadership.  What if this Pharisee had been willing to stand alone to show a love all of us should aspire to.  Could his prayer not have changed to follow suit?  But that is not what happened as Jesus explains it.

Jesus continues with the prayer of the publican picking back up in verse 13 saying … “And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.”  You see the publican too measured his own life by how he lived, by what he did.  He was convicted of his own sin.  He knew he cheated.  He knew his thoughts ran into impurity and whether he failed in body, he failed in his mind ahead of it.  He knew he had robbed his fellow citizens because he could, and because he wanted to.  He should not be in Temple.  He was not worthy.  But then, none of us are worthy.  All of us have sinned and come short.  At least the publican knew he sinned.  His guilt and his shame keeps him looking down at the earth, rather than up to heaven.  He smites his own chest in great pain as his heart aches within him over who he has become.  He does not know the way out.  He is trapped in his evil with no hope of escape.  He is hooked.  He is addicted.  But despite his chains he cries out for mercy from a loving God.  He asks for forgiveness He does not deserve.  He has no confidence at all in righteousness, but offers only abject humility for what he knows he does not deserve.  He has no idea what Trumpism might be, whereas the Pharisee has adopted it fully without ever knowing its name.

Jesus continues in verse 14 saying … “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.”  And here Jesus is speaking, but NOT to Trump.  Jesus is speaking to every church leader, and church member across the whole of North America.  It is you who exalt yourselves with confidence unto death.  It is you who fail to see how love should motivate both your prayers and your actions.  Tear down those dividing walls of certainty and embrace the sharing of love with anyone in need.  Stop exalting yourselves and start searching for your own humility, in order that you might serve, and desire to serve.  But Jesus is also speaking to another audience.  An audience made up of drug addicts, and hookers.  An audience who has broken the covenants of marriage and ruined the lives of many.  An audience that knows they are unworthy, because they know they are cheaters hopelessly addicted to who they have become.  Yet still smiting their breast and searching for a freedom only God can bring.  Freedom is coming.  God can right in you what you have wronged.  God can take that humble ask and make it something better.  Not because we will ever deserve it, but because He loves us just that much.

Trump did not get Covid because he deserved it.  Covid happens to both the righteous and the unrighteous, it is a pestilence that does not discriminate.  It is our confidence that leads us unto death.  It can be our humility that can lead us back to His throne, and a sense of our unworthiness.  Break down dividing walls and embrace a common love for Jesus, allowing Jesus to lead in all things.  If there must be confidence let it be in Jesus Christ alone.  Let it be in transformative love that saves.  All else is noise, and distraction.  You do not sin because the devil made you do it.  You sin because you have allowed sin to grow within you until it is well past your control.  You inherited your weakness from generations that lived before.  And the motives that now define who you are, are beyond your confidence to shake.  It is time to find freedom.  Freedom that only Jesus brings.  And Jesus longs to bring it.

 

Pain in the Butt Persistence ...

 

Have you ever encountered that toddler child who has already mastered the art of getting what he/she wants from mom and dad?  Nearly all the time “winning” that encounter consists of nothing more than outlasting the other guy.  The toddler asks, and asks, and gives hugs, bribes, promises, then goes back to asking, and asking until the parent is so worn down, they would give up anything just for moment’s peace.  It is not that the parent thinks any differently about the topic.  Their answer may always be a firm no, especially if life worked like it does in a court of law – “asked and answered your Honor”.  But that is not how the mind of toddler’s function.  When they see a thing; if mom or dad denies them, they just start a relentless campaign of “bugging” them until mom or dad caves in and gives it to them, just to shut them up.  Effective.  Now in fairness, a toddler carries the “cute factor” which makes it much harder to resist.  An ugly persistent adult in the workplace, might quickly find themselves on the unemployment line for similar nagging behavior.  But an adorable toddler, can last for days, never yielding an inch of cute, nor a moment’s peace until what they want, is theirs.

So have you ever thought about this where it comes to prayer?  Is it possible we wear God down by asking Him the same thing over and over and over again, until He grants our request; perhaps even if that is not what He would have preferred to do?  Now let’s face it, there are certain parallels in this.  God sees us all as adorable toddlers, no matter how old we are.  We don’t ever lose the “cute” factor as He looks at us.  But we sure take on similar behavior where it comes to getting something we want from God.  We beg over and over again, we throw Him kisses and hugs, we make promises and vows we intend to keep, well at least until it becomes “too hard” to keep them.  And then we go back to asking and asking again.  While it is impossible for us to outlast God in any one of these encounters, we might actually need to be taught a lesson about what it means to get what we ask for, even when God was longing for us to accept His “no” and trust Him over it.  And another similarity, toddlers don’t always ask for the right things.  They very often ask for outlandish things, and things that are decidedly dangerous for them to have.  Yielding to one of those requests could seriously put us in harm’s way.  But we go right on asking, not recognizing we are asking for the wrong things, at the wrong times, and may well be jeopardizing our very souls in the doing.

Nevertheless, there is a certain amount of success, in a persistence that borders on pain-in-the-butt levels.  Whether here with our fellow mankind, or upwards with our God who hears everything.  Jesus offered us a parable to get us thinking about this.  Luke recorded it in his gospel letter to his friend about what we believe and why in the eighteenth chapter right at the top in verse 1 it reads … “And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint;”  Even if we do it wrong, better for us to keep on praying.  Even if we do not immediately get what we want, keep on asking.  The answer from God may never change, but the connection with God is critical to teach us trust, and faith, and look to see our prayers in the context of a reality that cannot be shaken by the words of others who do not believe.  When we faint away, when we give up, our prayer life recedes into a dark corner, and we begin to lose all hope that any prayer might be answered, or that God cares about us at all.  He does care.  And even if He is forced to withhold from us that which we toddlers keep asking for, the connection of the prayers themselves matters to Him and to us.

Luke continues in verse 2 saying … “Saying, There was in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man: [verse 3] And there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary.”  To begin we are not describing God here.  This particular judge was effectively an atheist who did not regard God in any way.  Moreover, this judge was not exactly any kind of humanist, nor sensitive to the needs of others.  That would leave him a self-centered man only interested in making himself happy, however that needed to be.  Now in contrast to the judge (who most of the time are reasonably wealthy and happy) is the widow.  A widow by definition has experienced a primary loss, the loss of her husband, of her security, of her income stream.  That kind of loss is enough to make someone miserable.  And as we know, misery loves company.  Not long before it finds it.  Turns out the widow has a nemesis, an adversary she does not like.  Maybe this nemesis gossips about her.  Maybe she taunts her at the water well, or makes fun of her in the marketplace, or ridicules her at temple.  And what is more it is likely this adversarial relationship is a 2-way street.  Hard to have an enemy when you refuse to be an enemy.  So the widow plots the downfall of her nemesis, taking her grievances to this judge, to get the judge to avenge her cause.  “This” is not a good request, it is NOT a good prayer.

But how often do we pray the same exact thing?  And every time I hear someone offer a prayer for the destruction of others, I always hear a reference to the prayers of David.  But David was contending with the needs of the nation, in conflict with those who would eliminate the worship of his one True God.  Had David’s life been sacrificed Israel may have completely forsaken God at the end of Saul’s reign.  Our troubles with our earthly enemies rarely if ever have anything to do with forwarding of the gospel.  They are instead purely selfish in nature, where we ask for God to pick one of His children (us) over another (our enemy), even while both of us are in desperate need of His salvation, His transforming love in our lives.  If we were to embrace that transformative love, we might have long since lost the concept of enemy in our vocabulary.  But sometimes we like this widow, let perceived wrong-doing, or real wrong-doing against us make others our enemies we wish vengeance against.

Jesus continues in verse 4 saying … “And he would not for a while: but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man; [verse 5] Yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me. [verse 6] And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge saith.”  So the judge was not inclined to do what the widow asked.  Maybe because he just didn’t care.  Maybe because he was not inclined to punish the enemy of some widow who did not have a good enough case.  But this widow was not letting it go.  She kept coming back, day after day after day.  She was relentless, always in his face.  And frankly, this judge did not have time for this.  It was eating into his day.  He did not want to be bothered.  He just wanted it to go away.  He just wanted a moment’s peace.  Sound like the parent / toddler situation to you?  I don’t know about you, but I have seen this parable play out in every grocery cereal aisle I have ever been in.  Toddler wants Captain Crunch, or Lucky Charms (still my personal favorites); mom wants Total, or Raison Bran (not sure how those brands are still in existence) – but with some relentless begging, most of the time sugar gets put into the grocery cart.  Mom just needs peace after all, and values it more than vitamins on occasion.  This parable Jesus tells however is made up, an illustration of the same principle carried out in a much more serious way, even with imperfect protagonists.

Luke continues in verse 7 saying … “And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? [verse 8] I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?”  Here is where the parable or analogy gets real and gets very intense.  Persecution and murder are no laughing matter, as one child of God inflicts it upon another allowing evil to reign in the heart, the pain of the victim reaches up to God in heaven.  Those prayers of deliverance come with the intensity of life and death, for they suffer a very real life and death matter.  And not all those prayers of deliverance can be answered.  The heart of God must break as He watches one precious child suffer or die at the hands of another, in a desperate attempt to break the evil in the other, and bring salvation to all.  It is what the faithful would wish, if they could see the tapestry God weaves for the salvation of us all.  But that is decidedly NOT clear when you are under the curse or evil of persecution and facing your own mortality because of it.  And here Jesus says that God hears those prayers.  And while God has born our grief and suffered long with us, in order to save us, His patience has an end.  There will come a time when God says to mankind – “enough”.  Let he who is evil, be evil still (chilling words of revelation to our hearts); and let he who is holy be holy still (mysterious words few can comprehend).  But when those words are uttered, patience will be at an end.  What follows them is destruction brought about by the hand of God Himself.  A very targeted destruction against only the wicked.

Jesus says of this end, it will come speedily.  Perhaps as was just discussed earlier in the analogies of Noah and Lot, speedily because we are all too busy living our lives, getting through our days, and completely unaware that time is upon us.  Then Jesus ponders an even more chilling question of His own.  When He does come back … will he find faith on the earth?  Those are very sad words my friend.  In the time of Noah only 8 souls were saved the destruction that wiped the earth clean of evil.  A proof that evil’s time would not last forever, and its destruction universal.  In the case of Lot, only 4 souls were saved, and even one of those lost later by turning back to see an entire evil city be wiped from existence for the evil that consumed the hearts of all those who lived there.  A second proof offered before the final destruction of all of evil.  But SO few saved, willing to seek the grace of God, or move with faith to follow what God had asked.  The rest, evil to the core, and completely unconcerned with matters of faith – more concerned with matters that please self to the core.  And Jesus ponders out loud, will ANY faith be left upon planet earth when He does return?  That would argue that just like in the time of Noah, or Lot, few, very few souls, look past the lives they live to the prayers they offer and the faith they build.

Jesus began this segment by stating that persistence can accomplish so much more in our own hearts than giving up will ever do.  He told a parable of a desperate widow asking a crooked judge for something that should not even been asked, but finding relief because of her persistence.  To extend, we are not so much looking to change the heart of God by our requests, as we are looking to change our own hearts in the process.  For we are both widow, AND judge.  We ask the wrong things, and care so little about it.  But by persistently coming before the throne of grace, and looking upwards to our loving God in heaven, we begin to see Him more clearly.  By focusing our vision upon God – we begin to change.  We begin to care more, even about our perceived enemies.  We begin to ask less for their destruction, even though they persecute us, and more for their salvation.  As we begin to pray those prayers we are changed even further.  Our hearts become broken upon the anvil of God’s love and our faith is increased tenfold.  Our prayer life becomes one centered on the needs of others.  For our own needs we come to learn have already been addressed by God before we ask.  So we begin to focus on the needs of others, looking to free God to answer our prayers in the lives of others who may not otherwise ever ask.

Free will is a delicate line.  God cannot cross it without permission to do so.  A soul who rejects God pushes God away, and greatly constricts what God is able to do for them.  But when you or I pray for salvation to come to the erring rejecting soul – God is allowed to answer our prayers on their behalf, and try again.  God does not give up on the lost.  But our prayers for the lost, change us, and empower Him, perhaps to reach out to the lost using even us (His broken tools).  Will you find the faith to even care about the lost who surround you every day?  Jesus wonders aloud if anyone will.  Too many of us are consumed by only one priority – us.  We care about ourselves, about our own condition.  But we leave the lost up to God, and find no more care in our hearts about them than we do a piece of garbage that blows across our lawn.  When Jesus returns will He find an entire earth of people so apathetic to the needs and hearts of others?  It is possible.  But it need not be.

The secret, or rather the key, is to continue praying – and not faint or fade away.  Let us make our prayer lives as active as our need to breathe.  Let us remain the cute toddlers constantly bugging our parent God, but begin to see our requests for ourselves, changing, becoming requests for the lost our hearts break to see.  For we have no enemies, we see only those in more desperate need of the love of Jesus.  Let us pray to be the conduits of God’s love, and not the obstacles of it.  Let us trust that our own needs have already been addressed (the Captain Crunch or Lucky Charms are already in the cart, and the cart is already overflowing).  Given this, we are free to pray to fill the carts and hearts of others with the blessings God has already seen to it, we receive. 

In my experience, the prayer “give us this day our daily bread”.  Is answered by God offering me not just bread.  But bread of many varieties, fresh, and delicious.  More than that, sandwiches, and pizza’s, and panini’s that are served with pasta’s and steaks, and vegetables, and fruits.  We ask God for daily bread.  And I find He answers with meals far beyond the asking.  This is how God takes care of me.  Not just in food.  I ask to be loved, and love is poured out upon me from sources I never dreamed would, with intensity I never imagined.  My wife becomes more precious to me than life itself.  So now perhaps I can come to trust that my needs have already been addressed by my God.  And I am free to pray for her, and for the world around me.  And beyond my prayers, I can become a broken tool willing to be used by God in the salvation of others, with a new found passion to see the lost come to Jesus and find what I have found in Him.  This is a process I can testify works, because it continues to work in me.  If nothing else I wish to be the Noah and his family at the end of all things, and I wish you and your family are as much Noah as we hope to be.