There’s no doubt about it.  Persistence is hard.   And when it comes to what we do with information we receive, well, that difficulty increases exponentially.
 
In a 2015 Fast Company article titled “Why It’s So Hard To Pay Attention, Explained By Science”, the author cites “In 2011, Americans took in five times as much information every day as they did in 1986—the equivalent of 174 newspapers. During our leisure time, not counting work, each of us processes 34 gigabytes, or 100,000 words, every day. The world’s 21,274 television stations produce 85,000 hours of original programming every day as we watch an average of five hours of television daily, the equivalent of 20 gigabytes of audio-video images. That’s not counting YouTube, which uploads 6,000 hours of video every hour. And computer gaming? It consumes more bytes than all other media put together, including DVDs, TV, books, magazines, and the Internet."
 
The data in that story is now 11 years old.  Imagine how much more we’ve piled on since then!
 
Truth is that given the amount of information thrown at us daily, it’s truly no wonder our attention span is so short.  It’s not a shock that asking us to do something over and over across a long duration of time is such a foreign concept.  If it was hard for the novice disciples of Christ back in the times of Luke, how much harder is it for us to learn and apply knowledge today.
 
And yet, that’s exactly what is being asked of us by Jesus in the example we share this week.  How often do we take the most basic of prayers, the Lord’s Prayer, and lift it up?  Is it only in that moment in weekly worship when we are guided (or are guiding others) to do so?  How often do we cry out that we’ve asked for God’s will to be done on Earth?  Or for our daily bread to be provided?  And yet then complained about how things are turning out on Monday morning?
 
“And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’.  And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’.  I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.
 
“Because of his persistence.”  You see, prayer needs to be a steady stream of conversation between ourselves and a Father who loves us so much that they will share the Holy Spirit with us freely.  A friend of mine gave me a mug that sits by my desk each day that reads “If you only pray when you’re in trouble, you’re in trouble.”.  It’s a constant reminder that we are asked to pray constantly.  To have a conversation with God all the time.  Don’t know what to pray?  Simply start with even the shortened version of the prayer Jesus taught to the early disciples.  Because no matter where our lives have placed us in this moment, we can always use God’s kin-dom here on Earth, our daily bread, and to forgive and be forgiven.
 
In our steady efforts to cry out in the name of justice, to hear what is happening around us  today and to demand that action happen to bring light into the darkest corners of our world, we can allow the noise to build rage and pain and anger, and allow the last bit of energy in our souls to drain out.  Or we can pause long enough to dial up our Heavenly Father on the ole prayer hotline, start a conversation, and not stop until we can comprehend the answer God is giving us today.  If we are to follow the path to peace we are shown, we must invest our energy in asking, in seeking, in knocking steadily.  Until the answer is clear.  May we have the focus to persist and persevere in prayer each day.