What an interesting first reading we have today from the book of Genesis, in which Abraham is negotiating with God over the fate of the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah. This incident takes place early in Abrahams relationship with God. Abraham asks God to have pity and to save these entire towns if he is able to see a certain number of innocent people present there. Since Abraham is a nomad and not a resident of any town, we might wonder we Abraham would have since interest in the fate of these towns. Perhaps one of the main motivations of Abraham’s negotiation with God is for him to find out more about God, about what God is really like. Perhaps Abraham fears that the anger God is feeling toward Sodom and Gomorrah would one day be directed to him. At the end of this encounter, Abraham discovers that God’s righteous anger is tempered by his justice, mercy, and compassion.
God’s relationship with Abraham deepens at time goes on. His relationship with the people of Israel deepens through the generations of prophets and kings that lead the people. Israel’s understanding of God deepens through their experiences with him. Hopefully our own relationship of God and our relationship with him deepens as our journey of faith progresses as well.
We see how Abraham interacted with God and communicated with him in the reading from Genesis. Prayers is one of the main ways we communicate with God, which is the focus of our Gospel from Luke today. The disciples see Jesus praying to God, and they want to learn from him, to communicate better with God, to learn how to pray. Jesus tells them to be persistent as he illustrates in the parable of the man receiving help from his neighbor in the middle of the night based on his tenacity and persistence. Jesus tells us to ask and we will receive; to seek and we will find; to knock and the door will be opened to us, telling us to approach our prayer life in this way. This model of praying that Jesus gives us is like a child going to a parent, a very intimate way of approaching God.
We have many ways to pray in the Church. We have the mass itself, which is a prayer. We have our prayers petitions we present to God and the Lord’s prayer which Jesus presents us today. We have the liturgy of the hours, which is centered around the psalms. Praying with Scripture is also an important way to be with God. I approach God in prayer through pilgrimage, just as I did hiking the Camino of Santiago in Spain, praying through each step along the pilgrimage trail. The important thing is to devote time each day to prayer, to spend time with God in prayer and reflection in an intentional way, and to grow in our experience of God and the time we spend with him on our journey of faith.
No comments:
Post a Comment