"Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”
This verse always confused me on some level. Essentially, what I’ve always taken from this verse, is that ‘God will give me good things if I ask for them.’ So as long as I made sure that what I was asking for wasn’t evil, I was home free.
I had a 1988 Mitsubishi Montero, two door truck. It wasn’t a bad truck; I actually kind of miss it. The only problem I had with it is that it always broke down at just the wrong times. To start off, my Dad and I spent almost two years, off and on, trying to get it running for the first time. There was an entire laundry list of things that went wrong, every time we were ‘almost there’. Among other things, this truck taught me to be patient with inanimate objects. Other situations taught me to be patient with people, but this truck taught me not to waste emotions on just things. If I got mad, the truck just sat there, looking at me as if to say ‘tell me, what is it that you think you just accomplished by that?’ It didn’t care. It wasn’t even close to caring about my frustration—even though it was the sole reason for all of my anger and despair. It just sat there, seemingly oblivious to my anger. Obviously, it wasn’t going to change, so in the end, I was the one who ended up changing.
During the months and years when it was so close to being fixed, I kept praying that God would fix it. I analyzed the situation. Were my motives evil? Nope, certainly my motivations were not evil. Was I asking for something evil? Again, I was not asking for anything evil. So according to Matthew 7, God is going to give it to me, because "Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?” Clearly God would answer my prayer.
I don’t think I was wrong for believing this. In retrospect, I see that it certainly wasn’t wrong—it was simply incomplete. I knew that if I asked God for metaphorical ‘bread’, He would not give me metaphorical ‘stones’. So why wasn’t He fixing my truck? In fact, why isn’t He doing a lot of things we see as good? Why is he letting evil people rise to power? Why do women have miscarriages? Why do we pray for one good thing, and get something else entirely?
I don’t have answers to these questions. In fact, I don’t have answers to a lot of questions. I may not have answers, but I may have something better. I have access to Truth. I’m not talking about truth in the sense of ‘things which are true.’ I’m talking about Truth, with that capitol ‘T’.
Here are two things I’ve learned: the first is that the world is not divided into the two categories of good and bad. There are good things, there are better things and there are best things; all of which can be abused. Though it would be good for my truck to be fixed, God saw that it was better that I learn patience through a broken truck. The second thing I’ve learned is that often, we may think that we’re asking for bread and God is giving us stones, simply because He can. But picture this: what if the entire time, we’ve been asking for the stones and God, in His mercy, has been giving us the bread. We are like children, grabbing the bright shiny knife, thinking that that is exactly what we want or need. Our loving Father, who knows far better than we, holds back our hands—not from something evil, but something that He knows better than to give us. So we cry, like the children we are, for the things we think we need—a fixed truck, a fixed relationship, the money to go on that trip, the free time we think we need.
Here’s the bottom line: if you have already trusted God with your eternal soul, by trusting in His Son, Jesus, then you have no reason in the world to doubt His massive capability to govern your life. If He gives you what you did not expect, don’t assume that you know better than He. Our Father has always had the greatest regard for your best. Don’t doubt His intentions the moment you can’t see His hand.
