Pray Always and Not lose Heart
“Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it,” Jesus speaks these words in His discourse on the kingdom of God. How do you hear these words? Many of us know the old song, “I Did It My Way.” Letting go of our power to independently navigate our life’s journey is challenging but losing ourselves is eternally rewarding. To lose ourselves is to acknowledge our need for God and humbly live relying on the abundant love and mercies of our Maker and Redeemer. Following Jesus’ discourse, Luke’s gospel presents us with two parables that engage our minds in the mysteries of a life of prayer rooted in faith.
This coming Sunday, we read the first parable (Luke 18:1-8) about the “need to pray always and not to lose heart.” The parable introduces two characters. There is a judge who “neither feared God nor had respect for people.” Lacking in love for God and love for his human community, the judge’s focus was his self-interest, “gaining his life.” Was he arbitrating justice ethically or out of self-interest? The second character is a widow searching courageously for justice against her adversary. Persistently, she kept pestering the judge to arbitrate her case. Finally, he agreed to grant her justice to stop her from constantly “bothering” him.
What can we learn about a life of prayer and faith from both characters? The judge granted justice out of self-interest. Contrast his motive to our Supreme Lord, whose motive, whose life, is pure, everlasting Love. How much more will Christ hear and respond to our prayers? Further, the judge demonstrates the insufficiency and insecurity of reliance on earthly powers and points toward the sufficiency and security of a relationship with our steadfastly trustworthy and Just God. We say the Creed each Sunday, but trust demands an interior lived belief in God’s perfect goodness and loving mercy. Christ even suffered the pain of injustice, to vindicate us, to make us “holy and blameless” before God, when we turn to Him.
We turn to Christ by willingly surrendering our self-will for a relationship of faith and love. As we do, we become vulnerable like the widow. In our vulnerability, we open our deepest selves to God, and like the open pleas of the widow, our prayers become authentic and heartfelt. But not only was the widow open in her pleas, she was certain that the judge could vindicate her. A relationship of faith, “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” is the foundation of our prayer life with Christ. We pray persistently, confident that He can do all things.
Through a persistent relationship of prayerful communion with Christ, we receive not only earthly, immediate “things.” We receive the great life-giving gift of the Holy Spirit (Luke 11:13) to journey with us into God’s kingdom of justice, peace, and love. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we receive strength to not lose heart, even in times of suffering or despair. We persevere prayerfully for ourselves, and for others in our world of injustices. The Spirit prays in us and with us, with “sighs too deep for words.”
Christ invites us to “lose ourselves” by faith and join Him in proclaiming the message of God's kingdom among all people through persistent prayer and action. Christ the Great Vindicator is anxious to “gather up all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth.” Amen.
