In this verse Jesus is showing us
that God loves us even more than good parents love their children.
He reads the deepest secrets of our hearts and wants to meet those needs
because he loves us so much. In other words, although God's love is even
more beautiful than the love good parents have for their children, at the
same time, God is quite different from our earthly parents. This is because
the heavenly Father is holy. The word 'holy' means different, special,
set apart. So there has never, ever been anyone like God. He is'Other'.
This is good
news for the people who have grown up with parents who have not been as
loving as parents should be. Maybe their father was cruel or unkind. The
word 'father' for such people seems rather au ugly, frightening word. But
the Bible reminds us that God is not like that. God is love. Therefore
God is like a loving father and a loving mother all in one. The Psalmist
puts it this way:
'As a father has compassion on his children,
so the Lord has compassion
on those who fear him.' (Psam
103:13)
Isaiah says:
'As a mother comforts her child, so will I
comfort you......' (Isaiah
66:13)
Or as Jesus
himself put it, the Father will not let us down:
'Look at the birds of the air, they do not sow or reap or store away in
barns,
and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable
than they? ...And why do you worry; about clothes? See the lilies of the
field
grow. They do not labour or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon
in all
his splendour was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes
the grass
of the field.... will he not much more clothe you?' (Mattew
6:26-13)
Our heavenly
Father Cannot give us bad things:
'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?' ( Mattew
7:9-11)
Because God
is different, he is always with us. As Jejus put it:
'I am with you always, even to the end of the world.'(Mattew
28:20 LB)
He is not only
with us, he lives inside us:
'I in them and you in me.' (John 17:23)