"If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?
Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets."
Matthew 7:11-12
Looking at these verses together is interesting. Usually I think about them separately, but in this chapter they are clearly part of the same paragraph, and so I was thinking about that today, and I wonder if the idea here is that when we ask God for things it isn't really all about what we asked for, but rather what will help us the most and what we need. We might ask for things that will hurt us sometimes, or for things that look good, but will actually end badly. For instance, if we pray to be able to make our flight, and then the flight gets delayed/canceled or whatever, where if we missed that first flight and took a different one, we'd actually get there sooner. We can't predict things like that, but God can, and so sometimes it is more the spirit than the letter even when answering prayers. God wants to do good to us, even when we (unknowingly *or* purposefully) ask for bad.
Today, let's remember that God knows a lot more than we do about the way our lives should go, and let's trust him and ask for his will to be done rather than our blind stumblings. And as we look to others, let's also always give good, even when they are "asking for" bad. Let's bring more good to the world.
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