Monday, August 12, 2019

A God right beside us!

WORD 2day: Tuesday, 19th week in Ordinary time

August 13, 2019: Deuteronomy 31: 1-8; Matthew 18: 1-5, 10,12-14

God goes before you, says the first reading! God comes after you, says the Gospel! A great piece of assurance today, as the readings together affirm the tremendous presence of God that accompanies us every moment of our life. God goes before us in our difficulties and comes after us in our failures! 

In short, the Lord is someone who lives with us everyday of our life and every moment of our days. Living in the presence of God, was the principal concern for Moses. It was the prime example that Jesus wanted to leave us too. We may think this is a very redundant and repetitive message - but if we are truly sincere and honest, this is a challenge beyond what we can imagine.

What does it mean to believe in a God who accompanies us all the time, literally, and not just a figurative sense of it? Are we truly living a faith of that sort? Faith in this perspective would become our awareness and acceptance of that presence. Prayer would become our readiness to involve the One who is present with us in our daily and regular chores. Communion would mean that we make no decision without consulting the One who is there present with us. Service to others would mean a spontaneous and selfless reaching out inspired by the summit of all goodness who resides with us.

Just imagine that mode of living: Faith, Prayer, Communion, Service to others, Celebration of the faith, everything will be totally redefined if only we undauntedly believed in the concrete presence of God with us every moment of our daily life. At times, we prefer a God who is far above us to a God who is just here, right beside us!