“Don’t bargain with God. Be direct. Ask for what you need. This isn’t a cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game we’re in. If your child asks for bread, do you trick him with sawdust? If he asks for fish, do you scare him with a live snake on his plate? As bad as you are, you wouldn’t think of such a thing. You’re at least decent to your own children. So don’t you think God who conceived you in love will be even better? Here is a simple rule-of-thumb guide for behavior: Ask yourself what you want people to do for you, then grab the initiative and do it for them. Add up God’s Law and Prophets and this is what you get.” -Matthew 7:7-12, The Message.

Here’s the thing: over the course of my life I have asked for a lot of things from God that I have not received and I have received things that I did not particularly value. But as I have grown in my relationship with God, as I have sought more sincerely not just vending machine answers to prayers but to walk with God in God’s way and surrendered my need to understand it all (or at all) I have found that what I want has changed, my appreciation for what I need has shifted, and my willingness to accept just a loving presence without a present has grown dramatically.

I grew up with an unstated theology that communicated a deep fear of God. You didn’t want to ask for anything, you didn’t even want to be seen because if God saw you it meant you would be punished. You had surely done something wrong, and happiness was just asking for trouble. My ancestors who lived this are all gone now so I can’t ask why, but to some degree I understand.

There was a lot of loss, a lot of pain, and a deep history of suffering on that side of the family. It can be hard to find the loving presence of God in the midst of agony. It can be hard to believe at all in the face of inhuman behavior. Over the years I have come to understand God not as something to fear, but more as a presence to surrender to, and that will hold me in those places of pain.

I can pray to end pain, and I do. And I can also treat every person I meet with dignity, kindness, and respect. I can smile more, I can say please and thank you. I hope that brings a little light into hardened spaces and helps to dissipate the anger that I believe leads to pain and suffering. I ask God to help me; I ask God to help me walk a good path, to be with me and give me strength and clarity of vision, to help me to be more patient, to help me be more loving, to give me the resources I need to do good work. I ask because I know that when left to my own devices I often want to give someone a snake not a fish because I think they acted like a jerk and don’t deserve a fish. I need God’s help and presence to remind me that I was conceived in love and that God will provide nourishing goodness if I am willing to receive it.

After many years of fear and being filled up with a sense of rejection I know pretty well the meanness that breeds. When we don’t get what it is we need, we don’t have it to give to anyone else. So we have to first understand what we need, and be willing to knock on the door and say, “hey God, I need this or that,” or “I’m feeling thus and such right now and I need you to step in, step up, give me a hand.” When we don’t do this, when we aren’t willing to ask we end up in place of resentment if we see other people who seem to have what it is that we think we need, and resentment makes us unkind, mean, creates separation, keeps love out.

I had an encounter recently where I asked for something I needed and a companion in the situation did not. We actually both needed the same thing given the circumstances, and I asked if she wanted what I had, but she said no. Later she expressed frustration and was unkind about a totally different issue, but I think it was the earlier thing. I got something I needed, she did not, and I think she was resentful. I’ve been there, I’ve felt that. I have wanted what someone else had and I have been irrationally angry, disliking that person for no reason, because I am full of discontent and envy.

The hard part here is that you don’t always get what it is you ask for (something we all fundamentally understand in different ways, thank you Mick and Keith). We ask for one thing and we get something else. But I don’t think it is actually about the thing we are asking for at all, I think it is about just being willing to ask in the first place, and to trust the loving presence that is responding.

In the First Nations version of the passage from Matthew it says, “Let your prayers rise like smoke to the Great Spirit, for he will see and answer you. Every step is a prayer, and as you dance upon the earth for the things you seek, the way will open before you.” I like that in this translation it is a little less transactional, a little more expansive. If we make every step a prayer, if we live in a way that is a dance of prayerful delight, if we knock, trustingly, curiously, the way will open so that it will be clear where it is we are to go next and surely we will have what we need for the journey.