Luke 11:5-13   Persistence will be enough

The Persistence of Memory, Painting by Salvador Dali (1904–1989), Painted in 1931, Oil on canvas © 2020 Salvador Dalí, Museum of Modern Art, New York Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Suppose one of you has a friend and goes to him in the middle of the night to say, “My friend, lend me three loaves, because a friend of mine on his travels has just arrived at my house and I have nothing to offer him”; and the man answers from inside the house, “Do not bother me. The door is bolted now, and my children and I are in bed; I cannot get up to give it you.” I tell you, if the man does not get up and give it him for friendship’s sake, persistence will be enough to make him get up and give his friend all he wants. ‘So I say to you: Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For the one who asks always receives; the one who searches always finds; the one who knocks will always have the door opened to him. What father among you would hand his son a stone when he asked for bread? Or hand him a snake instead of a fish? Or hand him a scorpion if he asked for an egg? If you then, who are evil, know how to give your children what is good, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!’   READ MORE     Reflection on the Painting Our reading today talks about persistence. Jesus says ‘persistence will be enough’. I think all of us in our spiritual lives have struggled at times with the problem of unanswered prayers. It can sometimes discourage us and even push some to quit praying altogether. It can then even be painful when we hear stories of how God answered the prayers of others, but for us it just doesn’t seem to work… or at least we think that it doesn’t seem to work. Jesus is saying in today’s reading: persist! If we keep asking, seeking, discerning, and knocking, we will receive plenty, but it might not be what we ask for, or in the timeframe we ask for: God has his own plan for us, and what prayer will do is align our will to His Will.  The painting by Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory, is probably one of his best known paintings. The watches look like melting cheese, or as Dali put it: ‘The camembert of time. Here time must lose all meaning’. When we pray we often think too much in terms of time and what we want right here, right now. God’s time is eternal and therefore we are called to be patient, but yet persistent.  The orange clock at the bottom left of the painting is covered in ants, symbol of decay. Another insect that is present in the painting is a fly, which sits on the watch that is next to the orange watch. The fly even appears to be casting a small human shadow as the sun hits it.  As Dali’s watches depict, time is fluid, especially in light of God, who is beyond space and time… by Patrick van der Vorst  it