Reading 10
Ask, seek, knock
The reading
Matthew 7:7-12
Ask, and it will be given you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives. He who seeks finds. To him who knocks it will be opened. Or who is there among you, who, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, who will give him a serpent? If you then, being 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! Therefore whatever you desire for men to do to you, you shall also do to them; for this is the law and the prophets.
The companions
Psalm 34:4-10
I sought the LORD, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears. They looked to him, and were radiant. Their faces shall never be covered with shame. This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles. The LORD’s angel encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them. Oh taste and see that the LORD is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him. Oh fear the LORD, you his saints, for there is no lack with those who fear him. The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger, but those who seek the LORD shall not lack any good thing.
Isaiah 55:6
Seek the LORD while he may be found. Call on him while he is near.
The note
Three verbs, and they are not synonyms. Asking costs you a sentence. Seeking costs you time. Knocking puts you at somebody’s door, visible, standing there with nothing in your hands.
The effort and the exposure go up at every step, and the promise is attached to all three.
The argument is blunter than it sounds. If you, being evil, know how to give your children good things. That is not flattery. He grants that you are a mixed case and argues upward from there.
Ordinary parents, whatever else is wrong with them, manage not to hand over a stone. The case rests on the gap between them and God running in the right direction.
Then, with no break at all, verse twelve. Do to others what you want done to you. Asking and giving are one passage, not two topics. Anyone who has stood on a doorstep knows what to do when somebody knocks.
This week
Ask one person for something real this week. Not a favor you have already priced out and made safe, not a request buried under three apologies. Something you actually need, said plainly, where they are free to say no.
Then in the same week answer one request that has been sitting in your queue: the message you have not replied to, the ask you keep meaning to get to. Same door. Both sides of it.
Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (public domain). The divine name is rendered “the LORD” in the companions.
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