So it’s the middle of the night

How successful would we be if we went around to our neighbors banging on their door asking for 3 loaves of bread?

It’s 130 AM.

Actually just pounding on someone’s door in the middle of the night is not a real sane method of getting a hand out.

I’m sure it might become a grievance committee issue.

Then rules & regs would have to convene.

This is worse then your dog pooping in the neighbors yard.

Not a socially gracious, positive when your trying to survive in a hair trigger

environment fired up by bitter old cranks.

But here we have Jesus endorsing this as good methodology for receiving answers

Luke 11:5-9

So we knock!

And we yell!

Neighbor, be a friend & give us three loaves of bread.

We need it.

We’re out of bread!

We hear the answers,

I’m in bed, ‘Don’t bother me.

Your acting weird & freaky.

My door’s locked;

We’re sleeping. Get out of here!

Obviously, the police might get called.

We look like We’re acting like we’re off our meds

Now Jesus has some odd advice here

He says!

Be pushy!

stand your ground,

Keep pounding, keep knocking, keep yelling!

waking all the neighbors! Huh,

They’ll finally get up & get you whatever you need.

“Here’s deal:

Ask & you’ll get;

Seek & you’ll find;

Knock & the door will open.…

I love the paradoxes of Scripture

The Word of God is bulging with paradox

G.K. Chesterton, noted that a paradox is

“truth standing on its head to gain attention.”

He added, sometimes, not only is the truth on it’s head but it’s waving it’s legs

This is unusual wisdom. Because we live in an upside-down kingdom,

biblical paradoxes explain how something seemingly on its head is actually right-side up.

There’s a minister named John Day who pastored in Bellevue, Wa. He wrote an intriguing

First sermon called the paradoxical Beatitudes.

Paradoxical blessings are “mind-expanding & life-transforming” experience.

Our Lord wants us to employ prayer persistence

Be tenacious

Be determined

Be passionate

Be indefatigable, tireless & even stubborn

There’s nothing like Brother Square-Toes’—Rewards & Fairies BY RUDYARD KIPLING

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!