Following - looking back or going on?

WORD 2day: Wednesday, 26th week in Ordinary time

September 28, 2022: 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. So, what are you going to do? Look back and moan? Or look firm and go on?

Job's determination to please God was gradually being shaken by the conventional thinking friends who attributed human qualities of anger, dissatisfaction, expectations and disregard to God. Job declares from his heart that God is omnipotent and omniscient; he places all his trust and honour, but struggles to live his daily suffering, on par with that interior conviction that he had always had.

Jesus declares that it is precisely the determination to surrender oneself and one's total being into the hands of God, that is the hallmark of a follower of Christ. 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 choice for God and God's purposes. His life was one long demonstration of what it would cost of you choose God in life!

Think of the numerous pressures that exist in our daily life and context... the social pressure, the economic pressure, the peer pressure, the pressure of the tradition, the pressure of the stereotypes and the pressure that we create with our own self definitions... What are we going to do?

The answer is simple but incredible difficult to live: if you and I have decided to follow Christ, would we look back and moan or look firm and go on?