Winter Baseball and The Gospel

Luke 11:9–13

Luke 11:9-13 

English Standard Version 

  I am an imperfect person, and yet I know not to give my son a serpent.  I am over 14 years in, and I have never given my children a scorpion.  They did not cover this in parenting class -- I figured it out on my own.  I have bought my children ice cream and Legos and other things that they enjoy far more than snakes.  

  If human parents can figure this out, how much greater are the gifts that will come from God?  And God gives the best gift of all -- the Holy Spirit, the very presence of God, is the gift offered to us by God.  May we have the wisdom to ask and the courage to trust in God.

Luke 11:5-8

Luke 11:5-8 

English Standard Version 

  Jesus is not trying to make God look like he's ignoring you.  Jesus is instead trying to make a point about how God is kinder/more generous than any of us.  If you go to a friend who is tired and already in bed, the friend will eventually get up and help you if you persist.  How much more will God help if you persist?

  I don't think there's a magic formula -- we often try and find exactly what the number is for God.  God is not a vending machine.  But Jesus is trying to show us that persistence matters.  Do we keep praying?  This is more than praying for something once or twice.  Do we pray consistently for things?  If so, we learn to keep things in front of God, to continue to depend on God.  God cares for you and wants to hear what you're praying about, what you're fearful of, what makes you anxious.  Take that to God, over and over and over and over again.  The more we pray, the more it trains our hearts to cast our cares upon God, the more focused on God we become, the less we try and carry things on our own.  God is stronger than we are -- may we place our fears and anxieties there.

Luke 11:1-4

Luke 11:1-4 

English Standard Version 

  I read somewhere that all of the apostles would've started out life in synagogue school before leaving at some point to pursue other vocations.  They're steeped in religious life... and yet they ask Jesus to teach them how to pray.

  They knew how to pray.

  But they watched Jesus pray, and they clearly saw something lacking in their own lives.  They wanted to pray like Jesus did, in a way that was a two-way conversation, conveying intimacy and enriching their lives with spiritual depth.  They wanted more than what they'd had before Jesus.

  Do you long for Jesus to teach you to pray?  Maybe this is something important for the church in the 21st century.  That we not simply look for the words, but we ask Jesus to teach us how to pray, how to pursue God, how to develop breadth and depth in our spiritual lives that prayer might be life-giving and nourishing, a drink from the living waters that quenches our spiritual thirst.