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How Long LORD,
How Long?
Perseverance in Prayer - Psalm 6:3
by Lieut.-Colonel
Janet Munn
Reprinted from JMunn.CSLD.Newsletter.August2011.
Long before the woman
appears pregnant and brings forth her child there is life
growing within her. Similarly, all those hours memorizing
vocabulary words and conjugating verbs, only to feel
completely bewildered in listening to this foreign language.
But then, seemingly suddenly, the riddles are unraveled, the
babble is sensible, the language is understood.
So in prayer – with great
determination, pressing in, not giving up, always believing,
earnest and deep heart cries – sometimes even after years of
seeing nothing change, suddenly – breakthrough! In a moment
the miracle comes, she is healed, delivered, rescued. He is
brought to his senses. After all those years. After a long
battle. Suddenly, finally, victory comes. Something was
happening all along. What took so long? What if we’d given up
sooner?
Jesus repeatedly described
the Kingdom of Heaven
as like a seed, or a farmer who plants the seed and waters it
consistently, doesn’t know how it grows, but it surely does.
Often imperceptible yet totally reliable growth is happening
in the seed cared for by the farmer, and in the Kingdom of God when God’s people pray.
Key Scripture: Luke 18: 1-8
The ideas developed in this
Scripture include the struggle by the powerless for justice
(18: 2-3), demonstrated in Jesus’ selection of a widow, a
vulnerable woman, as the “hero” (18:1, 3), and the necessity
of relentless perseverance, fuelled by the imagination of what
can be, until justice is meted out (18: 3-7).
The Struggle of the Powerless for Justice
"In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God
nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that
town who kept coming to him with the plea, 'Grant me justice
against my adversary.'” Luke 18: 2-3
Jesus tells a parable of a
widow in need of justice, but the judge arbitrating her case
is unjust. The widow is without resources of any kind and has
no hope of ever extracting justice from such a judge. She is a
symbol of all who are poor and defenseless in the face of
injustice. Yet, despite her lowliness in society she
recognizes a deeper claim to recognition. This story told by
Jesus shatters stereotypes and highlights the power of the
seeming powerless.
Some have called the Gospel
of Luke “The Gospel of the Outcast”. The earliest Christian
communities were people who had been without a future, but now
they had hope again; they were the people on the margins in
their society, but now they had community again.
Read Luke 18: 1-8
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What are the injustices
you see in the world – close at hand or around the globe?
How can we pray for these?
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Who are the powerless,
the vulnerable, in our day, like the widow was in Jesus’
day? How can you, how can we Christians, help them?
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When do you feel most
powerless? What can you do about it? What can you do with
the sense of powerlessness?
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Try praying out loud
from the book of Psalms, for example, from Psalm 6 and 13
where David prayed, “How long, LORD?”
The Image of God -- As Judge or Vulnerable Widow?
"Finally [the judge] said to himself, 'Even though I don't
fear God or care what
people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I
will see that she gets
justice, so that she won't eventually come and attack me!'”
Luke 18: 4-5
The traditional
interpretation of the unjust judge of Luke 18 is that the
judge represents God, not in the sense of corrupting justice,
but in the sense of supreme power and authority. This does
affirm one aspect of the image of God.
We must remember that the
theme of the vindication of the powerless is a constant one in
the Scriptures, and the ministry of Jesus of
Nazareth
continued this identification of the chosen of God with the
poor. In two of Luke’s earlier parables, the woman represents
God (the Kingdom likened to a woman with yeast in Luke
13:20-21 and to a woman searching for a lost coin in Luke
15:8- 10).
Here in the Luke 18 parable
the widow demonstrates a God-like quality – the relentless
pursuit of justice. She embodies godly power in the midst of
apparent powerlessness. This is our God, the God of compassion
who brings good news to the poor, does not break the bruised
reed or extinguish the smoking wick. This gives hope to those
who wait in darkness, is revealed in Jesus Christ, and in the
persistent widow of Luke 18. We as followers of Jesus are
invited to the same: to draw on the power of weakness to
overcome deathdealing powers.
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Describe some
characteristics of God from both the Old and New
Testaments.
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What aspects of God’s
character are especially important to you at this time in
your life?
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Consider how the LORD
is revealed in this parable in both the judge and the
widow.
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What hope do you
receive from thinking about these things?
Relentless Perseverance Fuelled by Imagination
There was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the
plea, 'Grant me
justice against my adversary.' . . . And will not God bring
about justice for his
chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Luke 18: 3, 7
The powerlessness of the
widow in this parable is beyond doubt. Her case looks
hopeless. The woman’s only asset is her persistence. In the
Kingdom
of God as
told by Jesus in this parable, her persistence is enough. In
teaching this parable Jesus not only demonstrates a concern
for a widow, but even the implication that this woman’s
conduct – persistent, relentless, importunate, annoying
perhaps -- was a model to the disciples of divinely affirmed
behavior. It is difficult to imagine a stronger endorsement of
the widow’s persistence than that given by Jesus.
Through this teaching Jesus
calls us to persist in challenging injustice because the way
things are is not necessarily the way things are meant to be.
This includes countless cultural practices that need to be
challenged with the new thing that has happened and continues
to happen through the entrance in the flesh, of Jesus Christ
into the human story. Existing culture must be challenged and
at times confronted with the redemptive word of Scripture
The parable of the
persistent widow expresses the potential impact of refusing to
give up on a vision, an imagination of justice restored.
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For what have you been
persevering in prayer? What are the things for which you
need God to “suddenly” break in?
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What are your dreams
for how things can be rather than how they are?
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How can we encourage
each other to persevere, and never give up?
Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they
should always pray and not give up.
Luke 18:1
You don’t have to see God
to know him.
Faith, which works by love,
can see in the dark.
Lyell M. Rader
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