NOTES for Mat 7:1-12
Hoping for God’s help is as natural as it is for a child to expect care from its parents. If you cannot deceive your own child, how can the heavenly Father fail His children?... These words were not spoken for “naive believers” unfamiliar with life, but for perfectly ordinary people who knew that things are not so simple, that God does not always answer prayer, and that hunger, sickness, and death exist in the world. So what is this: yet another religious idea, opium for the people, or is it nevertheless true? And if it is true, how are we to understand it? It seems that it can be understood only in the context of the joyful News that the Ruler of the universe becomes Father to Jesus’ disciples. For it is one thing to know how to receive good and evil, suffering and joy, with gratitude from the hand of the Master; it is another to know that, in every circumstance, a loving Father will always be more faithful and closer than the people dearest to us...