18 One day Jesus told his disciples a story to show that they should always pray and never give up. ² “There was a judge in a certain city,” he said, “who neither feared God nor cared about people. ³ A widow of that city came to him repeatedly, saying, ‘Give me justice in this dispute with my enemy.’ ⁴ The judge ignored her for a while, but finally he said to himself, ‘I don’t fear God or care about people, ⁵ but this woman is driving me crazy. I’m going to see that she gets justice, because she is wearing me out with her constant requests!’”

⁶ Then the Lord said, “Learn a lesson from this unjust judge. ⁷ Even he rendered a just decision in the end. So don’t you think God will surely give justice to his chosen people who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? ⁸ I tell you, he will grant justice to them quickly! But when the Son of Man^[a] returns, how many will he find on the earth who have faith?” (another version says, “But how much of that kind of persistent faith will the Son of Man find on the earth when he returns?”)

I always found this story interesting. Interesting in that we used to sit around and discuss the concept of repeatedly requesting something from God (or from anyone for that matter). If I asked once, you already know what I want, I’m done asking! Right?! I mean, what idiot keeps on asking when they’ve already, as they say, ‘Made their request known’, especially if the request is made to a mature and responsible adult? And then I read this story. I read it from many versions. I read commentaries on the subject. I talked to others more skilled in the ‘facts of life’. The meaning never changed, we are supposed to ask, and ask again and again and again. Somehow that seems counter intuitive to me, redundant and downright ridiculous, but ok, I didn’t write the book. I’m just tasked with reading it and following its principles.

As I delved more deeply, I learned that it’s not so much the repeated asking, as it is asking continually in faith and staying in a place of ‘knowing God will answer, in His own time and in His own way’, a time and way that are better than we could have planned. I must admit, I don’t always live there. It sometimes (ok, a lot of times!) seems that His ‘quickly’ is not my quickly. Like, He’s taking way too long to get around to it. So what do I do? Give up? Say, ‘Sure He CAN do it. But will He do it for me?’ Stomp my feet and pout? I must admit I’ve been guilty of all of those (and more), but they never seem to work. So I do what I know to do in the situation and I wait. I wait for the providence of God. I wait with patient faith, knowing that my God hears my cry and is faithful. I continue to ask and pray because my little lady in Luke didn’t give up. Am I always perfect in my wait? No! Perfect in my faith? Absolutely not! When I grow weary, and I do, I hold up my pitiful, weak faith and say, ‘OK God, can you help a sista’ out?’ He inevitably shows up. How about you? What do you do?