WORD 2day: Saturday, 19th week in Ordinary time
August 17, 2019: Josh 24: 14-29; Mt 19:13-15
As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord, declares Joshua before the people. He leads them by example! Just like Jesus who made it clear to the people that following him was not always a pleasure trip – ‘the foxes have their holes and the birds have their nest, but the son of man has no place to lay down’ – Joshua too makes it clear that choosing to serve God and giving a word on that, is a challenging task!
To choose God, to choose God as the absolute, to choose God above all - these would mean today choosing to be little! Choosing to be little is choosing to be laughed at, choosing to be jeered at, choosing to be labelled 'conservative' or 'irrelevant'. I feel this much more in a context in which I find myself - the European West. This culture which was once upon a time so dominated by the God-talk, is today turning, if it has not already totally turned, Godless.
It is not our task to be sitting in judgement on the people around, but to take into account our personal daily life, our personal choices and priorities, and the elements of our daily life that truly matter to us. There we will have a clue - do we want to be accepted by the world and found relevant to the times or do we want to choose to be little, to be that little flock that surrounds the Lord, like children who feel secure in the embrace of a mother? What would our choice be?
It is not our task to be sitting in judgement on the people around, but to take into account our personal daily life, our personal choices and priorities, and the elements of our daily life that truly matter to us. There we will have a clue - do we want to be accepted by the world and found relevant to the times or do we want to choose to be little, to be that little flock that surrounds the Lord, like children who feel secure in the embrace of a mother? What would our choice be?