This morning’s Gospel reading includes one of those “tricky”passages from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount about prayer.  From biblegateway.com:

⁷ “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. ⁸ For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.⁹ Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? ¹⁰ Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? ¹¹ If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

The “tricky” part comes in with the sense that Jesus speaks in an unqualified tone: will, will, and will.  He then makes a comparison to people, who are “evil” and yet know how to give good gifts.  Then He points his listeners (and us) to the Father who gives every good thing.

(Interestingly enough, in the Sermon on the Plain in Luke’s Gospel, the Father’s giving of the Holy Spirit is how this moment comes to a head.)

Chip Dodd, counselor/author/podcaster takes this moment and uses it when he talks about human relationships: about what causes us to stop asking for what we need.  If I remember correctly, he brings it up in the context of codependency, where some level of healthy request is always off limits, always beyond the bounds of the possible.  And that moment of no longer asking, no longer seeking, no longer knocking is a sad and sobering sign of something being deeply wrong.

I do think that we are to ask, seek, and knock for what the Father has for us.  And I do think that the continuous nature of those actions can change us, can shape us and purify us.  Ultimately we are reminded that God is good Himself and that He is our treasure and that we must rely on Him.  It is because of that, because of who He is, that we can keep asking and seeking and knocking.