Pray Until Heaven Breaks In
July 12, 2025 - Luke 18:1–8 | Parable Devotion #20
She had no husband, no wealth, no advocate, but she had resolve.
Every morning she appeared like clockwork, a silhouette of stubborn hope wrapped in threadbare cloth. Her voice cracked when she spoke, worn down by disappointment, but she never changed her plea: “Avenge me. Make it right. Don’t let me be forgotten.”
The judge learned her steps before he saw her. He knew the shape of her shadow, the pitch of her persistence. Her presence was a pebble in his shoe, a whisper in his sleep. She was too poor to bribe, too alone to intimidate, too weak to matter. But she came. Again. And again. And again.
Jesus told this story not to highlight her cleverness or courage, but to press into our hearts a simple, stubborn truth: Pray and don’t quit.
Pray When You’d Rather Give Up
Luke doesn’t leave us guessing. The parable opens like a doorway with a sign above it: “Then He spoke a parable to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart.”
The disciples had just heard of a second coming that would cut through history like lightning. One would be taken. One left. A flood of judgment, sudden and complete. So how do you live between now and then? When evil seems to multiply and heaven seems silent, how do you keep standing?
You pray. And you don’t stop.
Not prayer that impresses dinner guests, but the kind that limps. The kind that whispers from the floor. The kind that stains the pages of your Bible. That’s the prayer Jesus is calling for.
No one can pray every moment. But everyone can live every moment in communion. The posture of the heart matters more than the posture of the knees. And what Jesus is saying here is not that you must be eloquent, but that you must not give up.
The Story That Stings
The judge was powerful. But hollow. He feared neither God nor man. He did not tremble before a holy standard or care about those made in God’s image. Justice to him was not sacred but optional. He moved paper, not burdens.
The widow was powerless. But burning. She was poor, invisible, and socially irrelevant. Her husband’s death had placed her at the edge of the world. And yet she burned with one cry: make this right.
She met the judge not with threats but with consistency. She stood in every line, filled every form, returned every day. The court clerk rolled his eyes when she walked in. But she kept coming. Kept knocking. Kept bleeding through her voice: See me. Fix this. Please.
Eventually, the judge caved. Not out of principle, but out of irritation. “She wearies me,” he said. The Greek there is bruising language. It means: She’s beating me down. Giving me a black eye.
And Jesus turns to the crowd and says, “Listen to that man. If someone like him…cold, crooked, selfish…can be moved by persistence, how much more your Father?”
Not Like the Judge
That’s the point. God is not like the judge. He’s the opposite. He does not answer to get rid of us. He listens because he loves us. He delays not because he is indifferent, but because his timing is perfect. And when he comes, it will not be sluggish. It will be swift.
But in the delay, the ache grows. And that’s where faith either dies or deepens.
Who Are the Elect?
Jesus calls them his own elect. That phrase, so often debated in classrooms, is dropped here in the dirt of a courtroom scene. And how does Jesus describe them? Not as the proud, the pristine, or the precise.
But as the ones who cry out day and night.
Election is not a badge to display, but a birthmark you can’t scrub off. You know you belong to God not because you signed a card or raised a hand, but because your soul aches for him when the world goes quiet. You cry to him in traffic. In hospital parking lots. Over coffee gone cold and children who don’t call.
And if there is no cry, there is no confidence.
Not everyone who says prayers is elect. But every elect one prays.
Faith Will Be Rare
Jesus ends the parable with a question that haunts the room.
“When the Son of Man comes, will he really find faith on the earth?”
Not religion. Not churches. Not influencers quoting verses. But faith.
Faith that bleeds through knees and stains floors.
Faith that prays through decades of silence.
Faith that clutches the hem of Christ’s robe and will not let go.
It is a sobering question. And its sobering implication is this: when he returns, the earth may be loud with religion but quiet with prayer. The elect may be few. The faithful, fewer.
Prayer Keeps Faith Breathing
You can’t separate the two. Prayer is not a side dish to the Christian life. It is the bloodstream of it. Kill prayer, and faith dies gasping. But keep praying, and even the weakest faith finds oxygen.
This is not about eloquence. It’s about oxygen. It’s about surviving the long night between promise and fulfillment. Between injustice and justice. Between his first coming and his last.
So keep going.
Keep praying for children who won’t answer your calls.
Keep praying for churches that feel half-empty and hearts that feel fully empty.
Keep praying for a nation with cracked foundations.
Keep praying for the missionary you haven’t heard from.
Keep praying even when your voice sounds mechanical and your words feel thin.
Because somewhere in the courtroom of heaven, the Judge is not ignoring you.
He is storing your words in bowls. He is bending his ear to your ache. He is preparing the day when justice will no longer be delayed.
And when that day comes, it will not be subtle.
It will split the skies.
But until then, be the widow.
Show up tired. Show up dry. Show up without answers.
Just show up.
Pray. And don’t quit.
He sees you.
And he’s coming.
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"Show up tired. Show up dry. Show up without answers. Just show up. Pray. And don’t quit. He sees you. And he’s coming."
This was always one of my favorite parables because of this judge's utter exasperation that finally impelled him to do the right thing, albeit for the wrong reason. It's so quintessentially human!
We miss the point if we try to connect the dots between this earthly solon's motives and our Eternal Judge's constant readiness to receive our heartfelt pleas.
Instead, I rejoice at Jesus' unerring insight into human nature and how accessible it makes these parables to readers like us, two millennia later.