Persistent prayer

I lift up my eyes to the mountains:

from where shall come my help?

My help shall come from the Lord

who made heaven and earth.

Psalm 120: 1-2

The myth that we are all equal before the law has long been debunked. We kid ourselves that our legislative and judicial systems have blind eyes when it comes to citizenship, gender, sexual preference, social status, education, upbringing and wealth. They don’t. Privilege given to any person or group is inequitable unless it addresses an imbalance or provides for support that will raise and enhance a person’s or group’s opportunities, protect the weak and vulnerable. There is a raft of anti-discrimination acts promulgated by commonwealth, state and territory legislatures that attempt to do so.

In Tasmania the sentence for Gunn’s John Gay for insider trading was $50,000. He sold $3.1 million of shares. The maximum sentence was a fine of $220,000 or 10 years imprisonment. A week before Gay was sentenced an Education Department employee in Hobart, Sandra Johnson, was jailed for four years for stealing $400,000 over a period of several years. Is justice blind?

Luke (18:1 – 8) tells the story of the widow who pesters an unjust judge until he relents in case she worries him to death. This is the story of a disempowered woman, of lowly status and of little income, who persists in seeking justice. It is her persistence that brings success. Jesus tells this parable to highlight ‘the need to pray continually and never lose heart’. This is ‘the cry of the poor (Proverbs 21:13)’. Before God we are indeed equal, though we are constantly assured that the poor, children, the disadvantaged, the dispossessed have a special place. It is quite imaginable to envisage this widow praying Psalm 120: who will help me? It will be the Lord. It is so much easier to give up, to accept less than what is right and just. Our persistence must be in both in prayer and action. The widow doesn’t just leave her prayer for justice before God, she is strengthened by and nourished by her prayer that propels her into action.

The psalmist’s beautiful trust in God is a constant reminder that in God’s eyes, we are all loved, no more and no less than one another. He is our guard and our protector when all around us desert us, or when human justice and compassion fail.

May he never allow you to stumble!

Let him sleep not, your guard.

No, he sleeps not nor slumbers,

Israel’s guard.

The Lord is your guard and your shade;

at your right side he stands.

By day the sun shall not smite you

nor the moon in the night.