Jesus told his disciples a parable about the need to pray continually and never lose heart.
There was a judge in a certain town,
He said,
Who had neither fear of God nor respect for man.
In the same town,
There was a widow who kept on coming to him and saying,
I want justice from you against my enemy.
For a long time he refused.
But at last he said to himself,
Maybe I have neither fear of God nor respect for man,
But since she keeps pestering me,
I must give this widow her just rights,
Or she will persist in coming and worry me to death.
And the Lord said,
You notice what the unjust judge has to say?
Now will not God see justice done to his chosen who cry to him day and night,
Even when he delays to help them?
I promise you,
He will see justice done to them and done speedily.
But when the Son of Man comes,
Will he find any faith on earth?
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you,
Lord Jesus Christ.
I wonder how far we can push the concept of coincidence.
Maybe putting on the same color clothes as a friend when you go to a function,
Maybe even the same clothes as a friend when you go to a function might be written off as coincidence.
Now,
I'll let you be the judge of this coincidence.
I am enrolled,
Well,
Listening to a podcast,
Not even enrolled in a structured course,
But I'm listening to a podcast exploring the Bible.
And I don't do an hour every day or a lesson every day.
I listen to the podcast as I can.
So then what is the coincidence that this morning,
Early when I was listening to the podcast,
That was a recording of something made 10,
15,
Maybe 20 years ago,
That the exact same scripture readings were used,
That the exact same story was told?
Our first reading,
Moses holding out his arms,
And as long as his arms were held out,
The Israelites were victorious and they were winning against Amalek.
And the gospel reading,
The need to pray continually and never lose heart.
I was quite dumbfound because also in a discussion today,
It came out that we need to pray continuously.
And when we do that,
Things change.
The community on Inside Timer know that we have been praying together.
We've been coming together once a day for the past nine days,
Seven days now.
And we were offering up a novena and asking St.
Jude for intercession and to pray for us.
And we have started noticing shifts.
We have not necessarily seen that the things,
The impossible or hopeless cases that we have been bringing to God went away,
But there have been shifts,
There have been solutions coming up,
There have been changes in our perceptions.
So then why do we pray?
Why does Jesus say to us that it is important to do two things,
To pray continually and never lose heart?
In our prayer,
It is important for me that we acknowledge that we do not necessarily know what is best for us.
We do not know what karmic lessons we have to learn and what we are going through.
That is why we say,
Thy will be done.
We are detaching from our own needs.
We are detaching from what we think our needs are.
We are detaching from the ego that is trying to keep us alive and we are surrendering ourselves to God.
We are surrendering ourselves to a divine plan that we might not necessarily understand.
That doesn't mean that we stand by helpless.
No,
I'm not saying that when we surrender we become like a tumbleweed just being thrown around by the wind.
It's not that.
In these prayers that we do,
We know that God is with us.
God is always with us.
God is in us.
God is us.
God is part of us,
Just as we are part of God.
But God is also part of every single human being.
So we do not suffer alone.
God is always with us,
Through us,
And in us.
And anything and everything can become a prayer.
Sometimes while I'm trying to do my books and do my accounting for year end,
That exercise I can offer up to God.
That becomes part of prayer.
When I go through struggles,
I offer those struggles up to God and struggling becomes prayer.
How beautiful is that?
I can offer my suffering,
My moment of despair as a prayer to God,
As a gift to God.
Maybe the suffering doesn't go away.
Maybe the anxiety or the situation doesn't go away.
But knowing that I can offer it to God makes it holy.
Holy suffering.
And when we pray continually,
The second thing that Jesus then focuses on is never lose heart.
Those prayers are heard.
Maybe not always in the way that we understand at that very moment.
Maybe not always with the exact outcome that we want.
And then let's look at that outcome.
Was it my will?
Is it my ego?
My self that is trying to survive?
The lesser good?
Lesser good?
Trying to survive over the greater good or take preference over the greater good?
Or can I hand that over to God and know that the outcome is going to be okay?
Let's take that further.
The outcome is going to be more than okay.
Because what's going to happen?
One day I'm going to die.
It sounds very callous.
We've been discussing that in one of the lives just now.
But I am going to die one day.
And that is okay.
We've spoken before about keeping death in front of your eyes daily.
So let's make that practical.
While I pray,
While I keep heart,
Let me ask this question of myself.
When I die,
How much would this challenge,
This what I'm going through,
Have mattered?
And see how quickly we reframe what we think is important.
Amen.
