God Partnering with Us and We with God

In today's first reading,  Exodus 3: 1-8a,  13-15, Moses sees a bush burning but not being consumed. he approaches the bush and from it  God calls him: "Moses, Moses!"  He replies: "Here I am!"  "Come no nearer," God says to him. "Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground."   God then proceeds to tell him that he is aware of the suffering of his people as slaves to the Egyptians. "I have...heard their cry of complaints against their slave drivers, so I know well what they are suffering.  Therefore, I have come down to rescue them...and lead them out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey."  The catch: God needs Moses to work with Him in leading the Israelites, Moses' people, out of slavery into freedom!

God does not work alone. He partners with us and equips us to partner with Him! Are you ready? Am I?

We know from more of the story, that Moses argued with God, indicated that he was not equipped to do what God was asking of him. God did not accept his refusal and assured him that He would be with him and, in fact, that his brother Aaron would also assist!  Furthermore, God gave Moses detailed instructions of how to proceed!

God does the same with us: He reassures us, sends us help from other people and from Himself, and directs us on how to proceed! He takes us by the right hand, walks beside us, ahead of us and behind us, doing whatever needs to be done for us to accomplish His will!

We are free, of course, to co-operate  and bear fruit, freeing ourselves and others from slavery; or we can choose to walk away and "dry up," as did the fig tree in today's Gospel, (Luke 13: 1-9).  In the Gospel story, a person checks on a fig tree for three years and finds no fruit and instructs the gardener to chop it down. "Why should it exhaust the soil?"  The gardener intercedes and ask that it be spared another year while he cultivates and fertilizes it to see whether it will produce. And so the fig tree is given a second chance to bear fruit, for which it exists.

What are you and I doing with the second and third and fourth chances that God gives us to turn our lives around, to make choices that bear fruit that will last?  What are we doing to walk away from apathy, selfishness, barrenness, sloth, and other behaviors and attitudes that block grace that would empower us to cooperate with God's call to partner with Him?

See the Saving Power of God!

The response to the responsorial psalm, Psalm 98, states that "[a]ll the ends of the earth have seen the saving power of God."  "All the ends of the earth": every continent and every country and State, city and village, in each continent has seen the saving power of God.  Knowledge of God has been spread throughout the world. And, in fact, the law of God has been written on every heart. Furthermore, "everyone who acts in righteousness is begotten by him" (1 John 2:-3:6).  St. John then says to us: "See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are!"

Each of us is a child of God! Each of us, if open to God's revelations and presence in our personal lives and in the world, "have seen the saving power of God." We have seen God's love being poured out, for instance,  by little children who cling to their parents, who rest their tiny heads on their shoulders, who give their art pictures to mommy and daddy, who kiss their baby brother/sister, who want to help mommy and daddy with chores or with baking Christmas cookies, and the parents who respond lovingly to their child's needs and comfort them when they are distressed.  We see God's saving power at work in the reconciliation of spouses, of grown children with their parents, of long-lost relatives being found, in criminals remorseful of the ways in which they have hurt others, in persons who risk their lives to save others from disaster, and on and on!  This evening on the CBS news we have seen God at work through a little boy who has found "forever homes" for 1400 dogs confined to kettles in animal shelters. We see God's love and saving power at work in strangers helping strangers in need, in children making sandwiches for homeless persons and, with parents, distributing those sandwiches. Human being partnering with God, allowing God's power to flow through them, is endless and happens throughout the world!

"Sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done [and is doing] wondrous deeds" (Psalm 98) around the world,  in our back yards and in our families!