Today’s Scripture Readings

Gospel Reading

NRSV

‘Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him! ‘In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.

The God who asks us to listen to him more deeply through these days of Lent is also the God who listens to us. This mutual deep listening is at the heart of the dialogue between God and the human being to which the Bible bears witness and which we seek to intensify through Lent. Queen Esther and her Jewish brothers
and sisters were in deep trouble. She has no one to turn to but God. She does so in the belief that God, who has never failed his people before, will listen to her now. And, as the story unfolds, God does listen to her and responds.

Jesus urges this same trust on us. God always listens to us; he never betrays or disappoints, even if he answers in his own way and his own time. The fact is that we are utterly dependent on God in ways we scarcely imagine. To recognise that dependence, as Esther does, is to find the liberation that comes from the God who listens.