Cats and God: Persistence

Our dear Susie (the older cat) is somewhat focused on food.  Every morning she joins us in the kitchen and asks for her breakfast.  'Demands' would be a better word -- she tells us how much she wants her food and keeps on telling us until she is fed.  If I ignore her she keeps it up, and gets louder!  So the only action that keeps any peace is to feed her. 

Jesus used a similar idea, with a different illustration, to encourage persistence in prayer in Luke 18:1-8. The widow who was asking a judge for help continued in her persistence until he answered.  "So don’t you think God will surely give justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and night?" Jesus said.  That emphasizes two things:  God's desire to give 'justice' -- and lots of other blessings -- and the importance of crying out to God in prayer and not giving up.  


God knows what we need, and he supplies it (Matthew 6:28-30).  We are his beloved children, and he cares for us more than we can understand.  He knows our needs before we even ask -- after all, God is all-knowing!  So why should we ask?  That's one of the questions about prayer that has puzzled Christians through the ages.  The answer seems to be "prayer doesn't change God; it changes us."  God has already called us his children and welcomed us into his presence, because he desires a depth of relationship with us.  One of the ways we pursue relationship with him is through prayer.  


If Susie only meowed once at me in the morning, I wouldn't think she really wanted food that much and I wouldn't be in much of a hurry to get it; but she is insistent and persistent, to prove to me that she is serious.  I think something like that is true of our prayer time with God; only we're not proving our needs to him, we're learning to understand and feel our need for him.  Praying for our bank account to be sufficient is obvious and urgent.  How often, how urgently, how persistently, do we ask God to deepen our understanding of our own sin and offensiveness, or to show us how to forgive someone who has wounded us?  Yet it is in those times that we submit ourselves to the mind and heart of God; and when we are that urgent and willing to listen, he is able to teach us what we could not hear before.  And how about persistently praying for help for victims of injustice, disaster or war?  Persistence might teach us compassion that a less-intense prayer would not.


Jesus described God's "chosen people who cry out to him day and night" -- to describe our pursuit of him in prayer.  I think he had a good point.  Here's an idea Joanne and I are working on:  a time of prayer in the morning before the busyness of the day; another at midday to stop and re-focus; and another in the evening, to reflect and give back to God all the things we couldn't resolve during the day.  How about pursuing God that way for a month, and see what happens?