Receiving good things

Today’s readings focus on prayer: with the poignant example of Queen Esther in the first reading (Esther C: 12, 14-16, 23-25) and these famous words of our Lord Himself:

Ask and it will be given to you;
seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you.

For everyone who asks, receives;
and the one who seeks, finds;
and to the one who knocks,
the door will be opened.

Which one of you would hand his son a stone
when he asked for a loaf of bread,
or a snake when he asked for a fish?

If you then, who are wicked,
know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will your heavenly Father
give good things
to those who ask him.

In these days of unemployment, foreclosure, and financial hardship, many people come before the Lord in prayer to some extent.

The prayer our Lord Himself holds out to us as an example, in the Our Father and in His own prayer in the Garden, is “Thy will be done”.

God’s will is for our salvation and for good things beyond our imagining and beyond any other good thing we could ask for.

Lord God, Heavenly Father, Thy will be done and have mercy.