“I hate you!” I remember exactly how I felt the first time I heard that from one of our girls. The sheer sense of failure that it evoked in me was always jarring. Whatever the cause of that statement, I immediately wanted to remedy it. I wanted to give in, make it better, to hear the words “I love you” again. I grew up listening to the story of my father’s cousin, who just wanted a piece of cake. She kept asking for another treat before bed. Her parents, thinking of her health and wishing not to spoil her, sent her to bed without it. She died that night. So growing up, if we wanted food, we got it. How hard it is then to want to discipline our kids, loving them, desiring their love, and cherishing every moment we have with them.
That’s good parenting, though, isn’t it? Sometimes you have to say no. You can’t give a young child a knife while in the high chair. We can’t eat cake at every meal, even if we have emotional baggage that makes us want to. Our wants and our needs often aren’t the same thing. That’s how we seem to treat God in today’s culture. Almost as if He were simply a divine ATM that with the proper code will give you whatever you want. Many look at today’s Gospel reading and declare just that:
For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds;
and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
As a Catholic, I believe that Scripture is 100% true. That means the above is true as well. God isn’t a genie who grants our wishes, though. The key to understanding that comes right after it in the text:
Which one of you would hand his son a stone
when he asked for a loaf of bread,
or a snake when he asked for a fish?
We should indeed have the kind of faith that says God answers every prayer. We have to keep in mind that sometimes the answer is no. As a father, I don’t give my kids bad things when they ask for them. I am sure I’ve made mistakes over the years. The thing I hope they come to understand is that I was always trying to give them bread. My intentions were still to provide them with what was truly good for them, not just to give in. The same with our relationship with God. He will answer every prayer in the way we need it most.
That means when we pray for patience, we find ourselves in situations where we have to learn to be patient. Praying for a sense of gratitude for our graces often will lead us to come face to face with what’s truly important. As we mature in our spiritual walk, we begin to change our prayer life as well. A prayer that used to be “God make my wife want to talk about politics!” will eventually become “May I have the patience to sit with her and enjoy her company, without wanting her to be more like me.”
Today, like Esther in the first reading, we should use our Lenten goals to prostrate ourselves before God. To plead with Him for the things we need, but also to offer it to Him with this simple line from the prayer that Jesus taught us: “Thy will be done.” Most of the time, what we thought was a stone turns out to be bread anyway.