Choose to be little

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

August 19, 2023: Joshua 24: 13-15; Matthew 19:13-15

To choose God, to choose God as the absolute, to choose God above all - these would mean...  choosing to be little! What do we mean? 

Choosing to be little means choosing to be laughed at, choosing to be jeered at, choosing to be labelled 'conservative' or 'irrelevant'. This is becoming more and more real as days go by! The culture in general is growing increasingly cynical towards anything spiritual. 

In fact, the cultures which were once so dominated by the God-talk, are today turning, if they have not already totally turned, "Godless". However, it is not our task to be sitting in judgement on the people around. Our task here is 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? If I say 'I choose to be little', I choose to stick on to the Lord in spite of the attractions of the dominant images of the world today, I choose to hold on to the values that are Reign-related and not what is trending, I choose to be called an "outdated boomer" while the rest pose themselves as a progressive and advanced generation of humanity. We cannot but be inspired by the dedication which we find in Joshua's declaration today: "it is the Lord our God we choose to serve; it is God's voice that we will obey!"