URC Daily Devotion 15 November 2025

St Matthew 7: 7 – 11
 
Jesus said: ‘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!
 
Reflection
 
I love this short passage from Jesus because, in many ways, it is so simple; ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened. Jesus is not hiding the message here in these three phrases. It is as clear a message as we can receive and yet there is a subversiveness to it.  How many places in life generally do we find, that if we do these things, that it is this simple? 
 
We must remember that this passage is still part of the Sermon On The Mount triptych of chapters, which are all focused on the subversive social justice of God’s upside-down kin-dom.  In this kin-dom people can live in a new radical way where freedom, hope, and joy are the focus rather than an enslaved life of sin, darkness, and death. Jesus is not forcing us to follow or believe, he is not threatening or coercing people. He is telling them that they have free will and that they have the power to make a choice; to follow: ask, search, knock or to disbelieve everything he is saying and walk away. That is radical! 
 
Jesus is reminding people that the choice is always theirs, the power is theirs to take hold of, and do something with life.  That applies today as much as it did when Jesus was standing on that mountain preaching. We have been given that power to choose, so the question is what will you choose?
 
Prayer
 
Parent God
Thank you for giving us free will to choose you.
Thank you for the open invitation 
to ask, search and knock,
so that we are able to become 
children of the radical upside-down kin-dom 
that you are building with us and through us.
Thank you for the relationships we have with you 
that enables each of us to know our worth in you.
Amen