He is our Father.
God loves us, each of us, with a love so radical that human fatherhood is a poor image in comparison. This means we can - we should - trust in him, whatever difficulties we may face.
God is our Father who loves us. He has a plan that is for our good, to bring us into everlasting possession of his own inexhaustible goodness. He is not just fooling around with our lives.
We should be able to grasp what Jesus means by the images he uses in the Gospel. If our children ask for bread, we don’t give them stones. If they ask for eggs, we don't give them scorpions. We know there's a serious problem with parental abuse or neglect if those kinds of things happen in a family. Even if we're decent and honorable people, that doesn't mean we're perfect parents by any stretch, but hopefully we're trying our best.
God is certainly an infinitely better Father to me than I could ever be to my own children. So why am I afraid that I can’t trust Him? Could I have really given myself a better life than the actual life that God has given me? And can I construct a better future for myself than what God has planned for me?
Should I not trust Him? What God wants for me is so much more, so much greater, so much more glorious and joyful, than what I think I want for myself.
In eternity, we shall see all and rejoice in all. Here, we see through that dark glass called faith. Sometimes it is very dark, but we must trust God to give us what we need to sustain hope, and to grow in the capacity to respond to His mysterious Love with our own childlike, radical, self-abandoning love.
