READ Luke 11:9–13
“So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given 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 a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
MEDITATE
Simple enough, isn’t it? When my daughter asked for a softball glove, I didn’t give her a tarantula. When my son recently asked for a truck, I didn’t give him a cobra. (Okay, so I didn’t give him a truck either; I’m not God, after all. My kids know that!) I’d like to think I’m a good dad; I don’t give bad gifts to my kids, at least not intentionally.
Simple enough? Not really. Jesus isn’t talking only about good and bad gifts. The pair, scorpion and snake, takes us back a few paragraphs in Luke’s gospel to what we talked about yesterday. When the seventy returned from their successful mission, Jesus gushed, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you” (Luke 10:17–19). Snakes and scorpions aren’t just bad presents. They are symbols of demonic power, of Satanic authority, of bared-teeth evil.
Who in their right mind would expect a present of snakes and scorpions when they’re praying for daily bread or a fish or an egg? Who would expect God to give evil rather than good, Satanic gifts rather than heavenly ones?
Who? Not me. I pray but am only rarely absorbed in prayer. I pray too slightly to imagine wrestling with unseen forces, both light and dark. I pray too casually to grasp the urgency of oppression and unvarnished poverty, where hope is bare-boned and despair tyrannical. I pray too superficially to confront the reality of the dark night of the soul.
Medieval mystic St. John of the Cross understood that an experience of the dark night of the soul is part and parcel of an intimate union with God. The way to God looks dark, desolate, terrifying. Those who’ve followed God most deeply have experienced the dark night of the soul—an absence of God and a confrontation with unadulterated desolation—en route to fresh faith. Snakes and scorpions, “all the power of the enemy,” waylays the pilgrim en route to God.
Those who are tenacious in prayer—like the prophet-widow Anna, who fasted and prayed for decades on end (Luke 2:36–37), like the person in another gospel story who knocks and knocks at midnight (Luke 11:5–8), like the widow who is so determined that even an unjust judge relents and grants her plea (Luke 18:1–8)—are the kind of praying people who know despair, who know the evil of rejection or, better yet, divine silence. Those of us who live in a world of respectable pleas and prophylactic prayers don’t trek deeply enough into the desert to risk snakebites or scorpion stings.
If we do risk wrestling with God, if we do wrangle with Satanic forces, if we do know the dark night of the soul, we needn’t worry about God giving us an evil spirit. God is good, Jesus claims, and those who are devoted to prayer, however dark and deep they may go, however dire their hope, however dismal their prospect of divine intervention, can expect to receive the Holy Spirit, but only on the far side of a wilderness teeming with snakes and scorpions.
BREATHE 
PRAY
Holy Spirit
I dangle my toes in a pool of piety
Not much risk there
It’s still light, joyful, tranquil
Take me deeper into the dark
desert nights
desolate days
despair
Take me to the far side
of grief
of silence
of disquiet
Where I’ll collapse into the goodness of God
Amen