Sister Ephrem Hollermann writes that day after day, our faith affirms that God’s love is ever-present and generous. Stories from Sacred Scripture have taught us this truth, and we stake our lives on it. In today’s reading from Matthew, the leper makes his wish known, and the response of Jesus is instantaneous: “I will do it. Be made clean.” If we read the Scriptures too simplistically, we may think we have been “set up” by biblical stories such as these when God’s response to our requests seems far from immediate, often disappointing, or even nonexistent. Many of us have joined the vast communion of people praying for peace in the world, and yet violence and warfare proliferate around the globe. Who of us has not experienced the deafness of God in our deepest times of personal desolation? Who of us has not prayed for healing for a loved one who has fallen gravely ill but dies? Biblical writers recorded stories that had been passed down through the oral tradition for a very long time. When they come together in the biblical narrative, each of them is no longer a single, isolated story of God’s love. Rather, they form the “big picture” of covenant love initiated by God since the dawn of creation. “I will be your God” is God’s immediate and everlasting response to humankind. If God seems to delay or we feel unheard when we make our specific needs known, our faith reminds us to turn our gaze to the “big picture” of covenant love and to remember the wonderful works God is doing in the world all the time.