Strength that Survives Bad Times

Today’s readings, Jeremiah 1: 5-10 and Luke 16: 19-31, place before us the scenarios of a desert and fertile lands, a rich man with everything he needs, feasting and partying, living the good life, and a poor man sitting at the rich man’s gated mansion hoping to get some of the scraps that fall from the rich man’s table so that he is able to survive another day. How many people devastated by natural disasters or by wars or the wickedness of radicalized adherents of a faith-based people continue to hope for relief from those more fortunate than they are at this particular moment in time.

Jeremiah talks about the person whose anchor of life is cast into the sea of God’s love, whose hope is in the Lord, his/her God, who does not grow weary and is able to traverse through life’s difficulties without losing hope.  This person does not look to human beings for his or her strength but to the Lord, his/her God.  I am reminded of a little girl in a refugee camp, having to leave her homeland, her friends, and all that was dear to her to flee Isis with her family and all in her village.  In a recent interview with a reporter, posted on Facebook, she praised God and states over and over again that God is good.  Where does this little girl get her strength? From the Lord, her God and ours! She has been taught not to turn away from God in bad times or in good times. She and so many others do not fear “the heat when it comes,” (Jeremiah 1: 5-10)  and, in the “drought” of a refugee camp continues to praise the Lord and seek the Lord above all!  How rich this little girl with nothing of her own is because she has been taught to turn to the Lord in all things.  What am I teaching the children in my life? Is God the center of my faith, my trust or am I living as though God does not exist?