Jesus is stressing that the willing and attentive kindness of our God is essential to know for prayer. We instinctively think of God without Christ – merely as Lord and Judge. And then we feel he’ll not want to hear from us sinners – and we won’t want in our guilt to be in his presence. But when we remember his friendliness, his open-armed fatherliness – that he has adopted us – it makes us want to go to him.
