Thursday, January 11, 2018

First Thursday of Ordinary Time

"Why has the LORD permitted us to be defeated today by the Philistines? Let us fetch the ark of the LORD from Shiloh that it may go into battle among us and save us from the grasp of our enemies."

While God has promised to always be with us and has offered us a chance to be saved from sin and death, He has not guaranteed us worldly success. When we pray for earthly goods, we should not expect God to provide them to us unless they will lead us to do His Will and bring about a greater good. If we suffer defeat or suffer a setback in our lives in spite of our prayers this doesn’t mean God has abandoned us or does not love us. Rather it is because He wants to always be with us and loves us that He sometimes denies us the things we want in this life. It isn’t because He wants to disappoint us. No. He just wants what is best for us and sometimes we need to be humbled in this life so we don’t grow prideful and over confident in ourselves. God is not with us to solve all our problems with a wave of His hand. Nor is He here to simply give us what we want when we want it. He loves us too much to spoil us. Sometimes that might be hard for us to accept, especially when we think we deserve something. However, we need to remember the only thing we truly need is God’s Love, Mercy, and Grace. Everything else is just icing on the cake.

Do we treat God as if He is our personal genie or Santa Claus, rather than our Heavenly Father? How can we learn to accept that not all of our prayers will be answered and sometimes what we are praying for is the worst thing for us? Are we willing to let God provide us with what He wills and not what we will?

O Lord, let us always respect your will above our own.

Amen.

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