Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
I read this gospel and I am immediately back in Texas circa 1987. It was my confirmation year and part of the experience involved a fall weekend retreat to our church’s camp in the North Texas countryside near Denton. There was a small lake, an amphitheater, a large campfire site, and a truly lovely chapel where we held small prayer services. I don’t remember much of the content of the retreat. What I do remember is the boy I was crushing on, the spooky Halloween hayride our chaperones put together, and the closing campfire. Sitting on logs around the blazing fire under the big Texas night sky, we were led in softly sung hymns with Bible passages sprinkled in and closed singing “Seek Ye First”.
We sang it in the round and I remember it being the first time I truly understood harmony and how it can work magic. Some of the better sopranos wove their “Alleluia” chorus through the verse with today’s gospel passage: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened unto you…Allelu, Alleluia.”
It’s one of those melodic snapshots that is burned into my brain. I need only hear one refrain and I am back at the campfire, back to the awkwardness of sixth grade. I am back to the way this song and a few other liminal moments of the retreat made me fully aware that God was real and there was something true and profound at work. My faith was so young!
In those tumultuous sixth through eighth grade years, I was constantly asking, seeking, and knocking at God’s door. Pounding was more like it. I prayed for the boy I liked to like me back. I prayed to be accepted by the popular crowd. I prayed for clearer skin, thinner thighs and better hair, a wardrobe my peers would envy and a real (not fake) Dooney and Bourke bag. The prayers were offered with agonizing sincerity. I truly believed that if I asked, God would give. That’s what the gospel said!
The asks, the transactional understanding of faith, the teenage priorities - it’s a little embarrassing to my older and wiser self. And it makes me think of another song from the era. Garth Brooks recalls in his song, “Unanswered Prayers,” how the desperate pleas to make the object of his affection return his love went unanswered. Decades later, he and his wife run into his high school crush, and he realizes how uninformed his prayers had been and how faith - the long road that bent around the corner to places unseen by his high school eyes - proved worth its salt.
As I watch my 14-year-old daughter struggle with some of the same issues I did, I find myself having imaginary conversations with my middle-school self. I reassure her that it gets better. That the asking, and the seeking, and the knocking are all answered in ways she cannot even imagine. “Don’t lose faith, my love,” I tell her. “Just know that what God has in store is so much bigger, so much grander, so much richer than your young mind can even comprehend. Be patient. The ask will be granted, the door will open. But it will happen on God’s time, not yours.”
Musical Reflection - Unanswered Prayers - Garth Brooks
Dear Lord, please guide us with your Spirit as we pray and lay our desires, fears, and hopes at your feet. Help our faith that we may know you hear us and will answer us in your own divine time and with your own divine wisdom. Grant us patience and courage to await your answer. In your name we pray, Amen.
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