More Than Bread Devotional for 6/7/11

¹And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. ²He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. ³And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ ⁴For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, ⁵yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.'” ⁶And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. ⁷And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? ⁸I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”  – Luke 18:1-8

I have found that this parable puzzles some people and bothers other people and I will admit that I have felt the same way about it before.  Many people are bothered by the fact that God is compared to an “unrighteous judge,” while there are some that delight in pointing out that they have exactly that opinion of God in the first place.  Some people are puzzled why Jesus would compare God to an unrighteous judge at all.  The reason for the puzzlement, confusion and trouble comes from a misunderstanding or sometimes an over application of parables.

Parables are generally designed to make a single point (not a whole bunch of them).  If you try to draw five analogies from a parable, I can assure you that you are over thinking the whole thing.  The funny thing about this parable is that Luke helps us out with understanding it at the very beginning.  Go back an reread verse one again.  The whole point of the story isn’t about God’s character or anything about how God listens to prayer or anything of the sort; it is simply a means of encouraging us to never give up when praying.  Don’t try to read anything else in to the story; it isn’t there, and don’t give up on talking to God.  He hears you, always!