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Breakfast With the Word Thursday 31st Week Ordinary Time of the Year B
A man whose son was kidnapped narrated how their little son caused a heavy blow to the family till this day. For many months now they have tripled their efforts to locate the whereabouts of their son, all to no avail.
The family went for a marriage ceremony with their little son. The ceremony was garnished with gifts and merriments. When the little son who was wrapped in their arms saw some people sharing meat outside the hall, he began to disturb the parents that he wanted his own meat.
The mother, trusting that he would come back, allowed him to go and get his own share. That was the end of the story of the boy till today.
I remembered this after going through the gospel of today. Hence, when we go away from God, we risk our lives of damnation.
One can give today’s gospel many topics like ” the love of God for us, Jesus welcomes everyone, joy in heaven when we repent etc. But after looking critically at today’s gospel, we can decipher what truly happens to us when we wander away from God.
We wander away from God when we sin against Him. Also when we take Him as nothing, even when we feel we can do anything we want, when we lose faith in God and when we abandon God totally.
Sometimes these happen because of what we are going through, our environment, beliefs, and the type of people we keep around us.
Like the story above, sometimes we wander from God’s protective arms seeking refuge, pleasure, favours and earthly blessings elsewhere.
We think that God has not been there for us. And while we run away from Him we also discover towards the end that God is everything we need.
Read More
The Journey with Jesus Is Not Always Rosy. Wednesday 31st Week
They Need our Prayers: The Commemoration of All Souls in Purgatory
The Saints: Our Hope for the Future. Feast of All Saints
The Standards for Living the Christian Life
Total Dedication to God: Feast of St Simon and St Jude
In the Gospel
In the gospel, the tax collectors and the sinners throng around Jesus to listen to Him. The Pharisees who see themselves as worthy while others are unworthy to begin to accuse Jesus of welcoming sinners and eat with them. Because of this, Jesus tells the parable of the lost sheep and lost coin.
He intends to show how it is the will of God that none of His children should wander away from Him.
In the parables, Jesus narrates how the shepherd and the woman search everywhere to find the lost sheep and the lost coin. And how joyful they will be if they eventually find them.
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In that parable God is like the shepherd, we are like the sheep and the coins and then what befalls us when we wander away from the Shepherd.
Things that happen When We wander away
- We Separate from Him:
Isaiah 59:1-2 says certainly, the hand of the Lord is not short that He cannot save nor His ears are too dull that He cannot hear but your iniquities separate you from God.
Our sins hide His face from us so that He cannot hear, according to Isaiah.
Jesus calls Himself the Good Shepherd but just like the sheep in that parable separate from the Shepherd is how we separate from Him when we wander away from Him. So, whatever happens to us, we have no one to blame.
When couples separate, they live on their own. When that little child left the protective arm of the parents, he was on his own.
Therefore, we are telling God we want to be our own when we decide to separate from Him.
- We are lost
2 Thessalonians 1:9 says that “away from the presence of God is also away from the glory of His might. They will also suffer eternal destruction”.
Therefore, away from Him is like someone who is lost. We fall short of His glory (Romans 3:23). In the parable, the sheep wanders away and gets lost.
This is when we decide to commit a little sin, maybe to try small. From there we lose faith entirely. Before you know it, you stop going to church and lose faith in whatever happens in your worship of God.
Hence, everything becomes mechanical and our love for God begins to dwindle. Failure to get your soul back then leads to eternal damnation.
He who wanders away from God is also prone to spiritual attack. Sometimes this makes you live in fear because faith in God is no longer there.
- God searches for Us
When we away wander from Him, He also keeps searching for us. He will provide many avenues that will cause us to come back to him. Sometimes they come through challenges, problems, even miracles.
On some occasions He may do something special in your life, feeds you with milk so that you make a reconsideration. Sometimes He pushes someone to talk and advise you.
He may also use hard experiences that will push you to seek Him. Sometimes He prompts you to read and listen to sermons that will surely touch your heart. Though we are not worth searching for, God keeps looking for us.
The only way we can make Him happy as the parables dictate is to truly and heartily come back to Him.
Imagine the joy the little child will bring to the family if eventually, they find him.
Today, let us decide to confess our sins and remain in the hands of our Creator. He loves us more than we think. Let us come back to Him.
May God bless you dearest and give us the grace to come back to Him. May He forgive our past and protect our future. Amen
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