“Can you help me?” Translation: please can you help me with something specific I am trying to do, probably in a particular way that I have in mind.
“Help!” Translation: I’m stuck / in crisis / desperate – please do something! Anything! Rescue me! I can’t cope!
 
These are not quite the same request, though both are asking for help. When we pray to God, I wonder which is the more frequent version we truly mean. I wonder if a lot of the time, we have a tendency to think of God in a somewhat transactional way: I pray the right way and do the right things and I get the outcome I want. The problem is, God is relational and not transactional. The difference is vital, and very significant.
 
I frequently find myself having to ask for help with very ordinary things which others take for granted. Things which most people can do, and with which I struggle. It’s hard to ask for help with things which seem easy to others. In those situations I generally am using the first question: it’s a specific problem, and the answer is generally fairly straightforward and obvious. Whether it’s opening doors, or opening jars, or carrying something heavy or unwieldy, it’s a fairly transactional sort of help. I need this. You can do it for me. Your reward is in heaven!! Plus a smile and thank you, of course.
 
Homework with my daughter is rather different. The last thing she needs is for me to do it for her! Instead she needs support and encouragement so that she can do it for herself. The loving parent who sits alongside and helps us realise that we can do this, that there is a way through, and that we are brave and capable enough to figure this out ourselves.
 
It’s ironic (and somewhat paradoxical) then that the cry for help which seems like a plea for rescue is actually often asking for someone to come alongside; and the more measured request for assistance is asking someone to do something for us that we cannot do. At first glance, it can seem the other way around.
 
In the gospel Luke 11 Jesus teaches the bones of the Lord’s Prayer and continues by saying, Ask and it will be given; search and you will find; knock and the door will be opened. It can sound like a very open-ended promise, and can set us up to be very angry with God when He does not give us what we want, and we do not find what we seek, and the door remains firmly locked.
 
Perhaps we need to remind ourselves of two aspects here. God as our loving Father is not going to give us anything which is going to be bad for us, no matter how much we plead and beg. No loving parent would, so why on earth should we expect God to do so, or think that we know better than God! Equally, there is the matter of timing. Something that will be very good or helpful for us in later life might have disastrous consequences if given too early when we do not know how to handle or value it. Again, a loving parent will not knowingly damage their beloved child. The problem is that the child doesn’t understand. “But I want chocolate for breakfast now!”
 
Prayer is about relationship, about trust, and above all about love and care. In the Lord’s Prayer we find all these, directed in a three-way relationship between God, self, and others. God gives us what we need when we need it. We cry out, “Help!!” and He does. Very rarely is it a finger from heaven! Usually it’s a person who comes at the exact moment with the exact skills, whether to walk alongside us through hard times, or (if necessary) rescue us from the wreckage of a literal accident. Miracles really do happen. What I have also found over time is that the shopping-list approach in help requests tends not to work so well. The prayer is answered – but the minutiae most definitely are not attended to unless God thinks them important. With hindsight, I often find myself laughing at my own idiocy.
 
So when the frustration hits, and we wonder why God is not answering our prayers the way we want, perhaps we need to remember Jesus’ explanation – it cuts two ways. Ask and you will find – what you need, but not always what you demanded. Knock and the door will be opened – but God will make sure it opens into a safe space, not a drop into empty space. Seek and you will find – but some things take a while to recognise for what they truly are. Our heavenly Father gives good gifts and the Holy Spirit to His beloved children, even when those children beg only for sweeties and fizz and the fad of the moment.

Revd. Talisker

Photo by Dang Truong on Unsplash