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A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with Bishop Jo Bailey Wells

Good morning.

When it comes to prayer, Jesus tells a story about a widow who visits a judge to beg for justice. She finds herself ignored, but famously does not give up. Indeed she wins him over by her persistence, eventually receiving the justice she deserves. The parable urges us never to give up in bringing our pleas to God.

Two friends of mine meet to pray together every Wednesday morning before work (they find that helps them to persist in prayer). They’d just read this parable from Luke 18 when there was a knock at the door. They steadfastly ignored it, resisting interruptions that might distract them from discovering what the passage could mean for them that day. But the visitor was persistent and the knocking continued… Suddenly they realised the parable was coming alive in front of their eyes, and the joke was very much on them! Praying turned to laughter and then hospitality - the story of that visitor is one for another day.

We’re invited to take heart from the widow, and persist in our praying – encouraged (rather than distracted) by examples of persistence we find around us. Where do you glimpse persistence this day… can you pray like that?

Lord, we thank you for the encouragement to persist in prayer and to hound your heavenly gates. So again we come to you this morning, as every morning, with the simple longings of our hearts – with pleas for justice, with requests for peace, with tears for healing. Work your mercy and grace within our household, across our nation, around our world. And grantthat you would work out that mercy and grace in us and through us. For the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.