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

 Now it came to pass, as He was praying in a certain place, when He ceased, that one of His disciples said to Him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught is disciples."  So He said to them, "When you pray, say:

Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us day by day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins,
For we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And do not lead us into temptation,
But deliver us from the evil one."

And He said to them, "Which of you shall have a friend, and go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has come to me on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him'; and he will answer from within and say, 'Do not trouble me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give to you'?  I say to you, though he will not rise and give to him because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will rise and give him as many as he needs.  So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.  If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone?  Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish?  Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?  If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!"

- Luke 11:1-13

Yesterday, we read that it happened as Jesus and the disciples went that He entered a certain village; and a certain woman named Martha welcomed Him into her house.  And she had a sister called Mary, who also sat at Jesus' feet and heard His word.  But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she approached Him and said, "Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone?  Therefore tell her to help me."  And Jesus answered and said to her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things.  But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her."

 Now it came to pass, as He was praying in a certain place, when He ceased, that one of His disciples said to Him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught is disciples."  We note once again how often it is that Jesus is praying in the Gospels, that when the disciples come to Him, He is in prayer.  My study bible says that "teach us to pray" expresses a universal longing to be in communion with God.

So He said to them, "When you pray, say:  Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name.  Your kingdom come.  Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven."  My study bible explains that the Father-Son relationship within the Trinity gives us our potential relationship with God.  Through Christ we also are children by adoption, by grace (Galatians 4:4-7).  It says, "As a 'son of God' the Christian is called to love, trust, and serve God as Christ does the Father."  It notes also that God is not our Father just because He created us.  He becomes Father to those who are engaged in a saving and personal relationship with Him, a communion that comes by the grace of adoption (see John 1:13, Romans 8:14-16).

"Give us day by day our daily bread."  My study bible explains that daily is a misleading translation of the Greek epiousios, which means literally "above the essence," or "supersubstantial."  The expression daily bread means not merely bread for this day, for earthly nourishment; it's about the bread of the eternal day of the Kingdom of God, for the nourishment of our immortal soul.  It says, "This living supersubstantial bread is Christ Himself.  In the Lord's Prayer, then, we are not asking merely for material bread for physical health, but for the spiritual bread of eternal life (John 6:27-58)."

"And forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us."  A note tells us:  "The request to be forgiven is plural, directing us to pray always for the forgiveness of others.  The term debts refers to spiritual debts (see Matthew 18:21-35)."

"And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."  My study bible says that God tempts no one to sin (James 1:13); temptations are from the evil one, the devil.  It says, "Temptations are aimed at the soul's giving in to the sinful passions of the flesh (Romans 7:5).  No one lives without encountering temptations, but we pray that great temptations, tests beyond what we can bear (1 Corinthians 10:13), should not come to us."  "Passions of the flesh" includes all kinds of selfishness.  

And He said to them, "Which of you shall have a friend, and go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has come to me on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him'; and he will answer from within and say, 'Do not trouble me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give to you'?  I say to you, though he will not rise and give to him because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will rise and give him as many as he needs."   A note here tells us that "this parable demonstrates God's faithfulness to those who are in need and who pray with persistence.  The Fathers interpret midnight as both the time of our death and a time of great temptation.  The friend is Christ, who, as our only source of grace, provides everything we need."

"So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.  If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone?  Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish?  Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?  If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!"   A note tells us that in the Greek of the text, the verbs translated ask, seek, and knock imply a continuing action.  They are more exactly translated reading, "keep asking," "keep seeking," and "keep knocking."   "God responds when we persistently ask for things that are good.  Bread, fish and an egg are all images of life and symbolize the gift of the Holy Spirit (see John 14:13-14; James 4:3)." 

We note the spiritual emphasis of Jesus' teachings on prayer.  This isn't about making a laundry list of the things we want in life.  It's not about asking for things like writing a letter to Santa Claus.  This is about the hunger and thirst for righteousness, the deep longing for God, for communion, especially for the gift of the Holy Spirit, in Christ's words in verse 13.  This is about becoming one with God's will, as we are directed to pray, "Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven."  This is a kind of prayer that is asking for unification in the Spirit even so that we may pray for the things that we ought, the things God wants for us.  Jesus elsewhere teaches that it is the Kingdom we must seek first before all other things (taught with beautiful parables in the next chapter of Luke).  It is remarkable that this message is missed so often, that the true image of prayer here is about the longing to be in communion with the Father, to bring the Kingdom into the world, to practice forgiveness as we are forgiven, to pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Christ wants us to live the kind of God-centered life that extends meanings to everything else in our lives, in the world.  What we pray for is a central core of communion and faith to replace forms of self-centeredness that leave us limited in our understanding of our lives and what is possible for us in life.  If everything becomes centered around a happiness that is only dependent on what is around ourselves, then we will not find that sort of happiness -- because it is thoroughly based on things beyond our control.  So often it is in seeking that kind of control that we slip up, that life takes on a snowballing effect of one wrong step after another, reaching past boundaries to manipulate others, to steal, even to kill.  Our communion with others comes first through communion with the Father.  We base first our love of God and the bounties of the Holy Spirit as the thing we really and truly need, because that places in us a direction, a kind of bedrock, a touchstone which gives meanings and changes our relationship with everything else in our lives.  It touches others as well, with a shared kind of joy that is not just dependent on material life, what we own, but who we come to know we are.  This is the foundation we seek that is not just a "one-time" understanding but an every day journey, as we pray also we may have this bread of "life in abundance" every day.  It gives light to our lives, our minds, our souls, so that we may walk in this world better seeing, illuminated.  Let us consider what we pray for and what is the best gift that affects everything else we are, we do, we have.