Vessel & Altar

"Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you." - Luke 11:9

A man wakes his neighbor at midnight, Sister, because a friend arrived hungry and he has nothing in the house to feed him. Jesus doesn't call the persistence rude. He calls it exactly right. Ask, keep asking. Seek, keep seeking. Knock, and don't stop because the first knock went unanswered.

You are being filled so that something can be set on the table.

Most women learn early to manage rather than ask, especially once other people are depending on them. Asking can feel like admitting the managing has failed. Jesus's parable suggests something different: the man at the door isn't failing by asking. He's doing exactly what a person with a real need, and someone else's hunger to answer for, is supposed to do.

Paul's first reading calls the Galatians foolish for forgetting that what they received, they received by asking and believing, not by earning it through their own strength. Remember that if you've spent years being the one others ask rather than the one who asks.

Jesus closes with the plainest comparison available: if you, imperfect as you are, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. Whatever you've been managing alone that you could actually ask for help with, tonight is a fair night to knock.

Zechariah's canticle, in today's psalm, prays for deliverance so that his people could worship without fear. Deliverance was never meant to make anyone self-sufficient. It was meant to free a person to keep asking, without shame, for as long as the need is real.

Ask for one specific thing you need this week, out loud, to the person who can actually help. Not a hint. An actual ask.

Lord, I manage more than I ask. Teach me to knock and trust that you want to open the door. Amen.