The friend who knocks at midnight

"Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves; For a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him? […] I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth." Luke 11:5-8

First, see the scene as Jesus's listeners saw it. A single-storey house, one room, the whole family asleep on the same mat. Getting up at midnight means waking the children. The friend's refusal is not selfishness, it is common sense.

Next, notice who the man is asking for. He is not hungry. He wants bread for a traveller who has turned up unannounced. The whole parable, which serves as a model for prayer, describes someone knocking on behalf of another.

That is a truer definition of intercession than many of ours: a man with nothing to offer, who knows it, and who goes and wakes somebody richer than himself for the sake of a third party.

The word rendered "importunity" is hard to translate. It carries the idea of shamelessness — something like assumed nerve. The man knows he is a nuisance. He knocks anyway, because the discomfort of disturbing weighs less than the thought of leaving his guest with nothing.

And this is where many believers stop. They give up asking not from lack of faith, but from politeness. They feel they have already troubled God enough about this. In this parable, Jesus names that very reticence as the obstacle.

Read what follows immediately, in verse 9: Ask, and it shall be given you. The three verbs that follow — ask, seek, knock — are continuous in the Greek. Ask, and keep asking.

Today. Take up the request you abandoned out of embarrassment, telling yourself you had insisted enough. That is precisely the one this parable gives you leave to carry again.

---