Who's that knocking at my door?

In our Church next Sunday (25th July) we will keep[ St James Day but here are some reflections the readings for Sunday 25th July 2010 Proper 12, Year C. The 9th Sunday after Pentecost are.Hosea 1:2-10 and Psalm 85 , Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19) Luke 11:1-13

I don't like being woken up
let alone being woken up at midnight.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Who is knocking at the door?
When we thought about this together on Monday
we had a mixture of feelings
If it is your friend who is knocking
then in a way
it is a privilege
that you have a friend who believes that they can come knocking at the dead of night
If you are not sure who it is who is knocking
then there can be an element of fear
If you have children who are out then this fear
can be even greater as you wonder
what on earth has happened.
All in all it is a pretty disturbing sort of event.
But let's not make it harder than it needs to be.
Parables are a straightforward teaching device
which usually have one point.
They are not allegory
where every detail needs to be interpreted.
What is the one point?
Well, because there are a couple of parables rolled into one
we may see two or three points.
But let's focus on this knocking

Who's that knocking at my door?
We can see the 'knocker' as either being ourself
or God
If it is God, then this parable
reminds us that God persists with us.
That is a reassuring thought.
It is reinforced in the conclusion
How much more will God give the Holy Spirit?
How might you know that God is 'knocking'?
We have to be a bit intuitive here
Is there something that keeps grabbing our attention
but we 'roll over and try to go back to sleep'?
I find that I need to pay attention about some of these things,
if someone crosses my mind forcefully
over and over again
is there some prompting here.
We don't need to be superstitious or ridiculous
about such things
sometimes we will ring a person up
or pop in to see them at work
and we will have come at just the right time.
Other times it might just be good that we have said hello
and it doesn't seem to be so obvious.
If God was speaking to us...we asked last week...
would we hear
If God is hammering at my life
can I drag myself out of bed?

But there is another sense
of course in which it is you and me
who is knocking at God's door
and we are simply being told to persist.
Ask and it will be given to you, Knock and it shall be opened
Seek and you will find.
These, to me , are very reassuring words
Coupled with the reminder
of the last verse of this section

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him

Don't get fixated on "you who are evil"
it's merely making the point that God knows better what to do than we do ourselves.
And that we should persist,
in fact we should keep on knocking
and hammering until we get a reply.
Let's not make it too hard.
This may mean that
we have to keep knocking and asking
until we get what we need
rather than what we want.
This is a major reason why we think our prayers don't get answered.
Sometimes we are saying....God give me a black dog
And maybe we have to keep on praying until we get a brown rabbit!
Or maybe there is something much more important,
...do you need to focus your love on a person rather an animal
...do you need to allow yourself to open up the grief in your life when your last pet died, or a relationship ended or the disappointments of childhood?

We need to persist until we get fed,
but maybe we may get scones instead of bread,
or cake
or we may need to learn how to cook!

There is, I say again
great reassurance in the fact
that though we may not be terribly good at this praying
that God is
and that as we stick with it,
as we keep tapping at the door
God does indeed hear and respond.
But we need to persist.