The Tenderness of Our God

Today’s Scriptures speaks of  the tenderness of our God! I love to watch  parents hugging a child, stoking its hair, holding a child close to their bosom.  The tenderness between loving parents and a child reflects God’s tenderness toward each of us. The first reading of today’s liturgy, Is 49: 14-15, asks us: “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb?” And, “even should she forget, I will never forget you.”

The Gospel, Mt 6: 24-34, echoes this same theme of God’s tender, loving care, inviting us to ponder the flowers and the grasses of the fields, the birds of air, and how God watches over each of them and provides for all of their needs.  Certainly their splendor and their beauty does not come close to the beauty of any one of us created in God’s very image, male and female.  And if God provides adequately and sumptuously for every bird, every fish of the sea, every flower that graces our landscapes, every blade of grass that blooms in the morning and fades at night, how much more does God provide for us..  “Why,” Jesus asked, “are you fraught with worry? Your heavenly Father knows…[what] you need…”  Besides, he says, “tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.”And no matter what today’s or tomorrow’s “evil” is, God, like any good parent,  knows how to help us deal with it.  Do I have the faith of a child who, no matter what, trusts its loving parents to provide what is needed as he/or she faces the day’s “evil”?  No wonder Jesus says to us,  in Mt 18: 3, that unless, we become like a little child, we shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.  Only when we face today’s “evil” with the trust of a little child do we experience  the presence of God’s Kingdom of Heaven right here and now.

How trusting am I? How believing am I that God will provide?