Following, looking back and looking firm.
Wednesday, 26th week in Ordinary Time
Job 9: 1-13,14-16; Lk 9: 57-62
Jesus gives us a hard lesson on discipleship today. If you have made a choice for God, you have made a choice for struggles and situations that will estrange you from the rest around you. What are you going to do? Look back and moan? Or look firm and go on?
Job's determination to please God is gradually being shaken by the conventional thinking friends who attribute the human qualities of anger, dissatisfaction, expectations and disregard to God. Job declares from his heart that God is omnipotent and omniscient but struggles to live his daily suffering on par with that interior conviction.
Jesus declares that precisely the determination to surrender oneself and one's total being into the hands of God is the hallmark of a follower of his. Jesus had a mighty share of suffering, struggle and strife. But that in no way deviated him from holding on to God and looking firm in his choices.
If you and I have decided to follow Christ - what do we do? Look back and moan or look firm and go on?