Daily Manna · Day 189 · July 8
How Much More
“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?”
A child comes into a kitchen and asks for bread. That is the entire scene Jesus builds the argument out of, and he keeps it that ordinary on purpose.
Your praying has shrunk over the years. You used to ask for the whole thing. Now you ask for coping, because coping seems likelier to be granted and disappointment costs less if you order carefully.
Look at the shape of the argument, because the insulting half is aimed at us and it is deliberate. If ye then, being evil. That is his phrase for ordinary decent parents, dropped in without softening. Even they, being what they are, do not hand a hungry child a stone or a serpent. The reasoning runs from lesser to greater, a standard move in his world: if the flawed version manages this much, how much more the perfect one. And notice the word that changes at the end. The parents give good gifts; the Father gives good things, and when Luke reports this same saying the good thing is the Holy Spirit, which tells you what Jesus considers the best item on the shelf.
Which is also why some answers look like refusals for a long while. Good is measured at his end of the transaction, not yours, and a parent who never once refused a request would not be a good parent, only an exhausted one.
So take the promise exactly as written: he shall give good things to them that ask him. Not to those who ask correctly. Not to those who have earned a hearing. To them that ask. Asking is the entire qualification, and it is what a child does before it can spell.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 189 is Some Great Thing (2 Kings 5:13).