The Lost children of God...

WORD 2day: Wednesday, 14th week in Ordinary time

July 8, 2026 - Hosea 10:1-3,7-8,12; Matthew 10:1-7

We see the Lord calling his apostles today and sending them to the lost house of Israel...go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. It is not about some historically lost group of people that the Word is speaking to us - the reference is to the present situation, the present day when people are more and more drifting away from God, when the very children created by God are losing God, getting lost from God, getting themselves away from God. 

In the first reading today, Hosea gives us at least three ways in which persons today get themselves lost from God.

The first is the image of the "divided heart"...persons divided between the good and the evil, divided between the truth and the fake, divided between love and animosity, divided between giving and avarice.

The second is the image of the "straw drifting on the water" ...the aimless ways of life, the confusing value systems, increasing promiscuity and self-centred justification of everything that leads to relativism.

The third is the image of the "thorns and thistles on the altar"...the sacred of our life encroached by the tendencies of materialism, consumerism, objectification of persons, possessive sense of sentimentalism and many other thinking and practice which cloud the true spiritual sense of human call. 

Every person is a child of God... that is our true identity and fundamental calling, but often times today marred by the conflicting ideas and luring attractions. How are we going to remain children of God in our daily lives? How are we going to reach out to the "lost children of God"?