Trusting in the Lord

Trust is the theme of both readings, Genesis 8: 6-13, 20-22 and Mark 8: 22-26.   In the first reading, Noah has just come through the forty days of rain and is waiting for the waters to subside.  He and his family were the only human beings spared the loss of life during the torrential downpours for the past forty days.  In the Gospel reading, Jesus takes a blind man aside, touches his eyes twice, the first time the man does not see clearly:  "I see people looking like trees and walking," he tells Jesus. After Jesus touches his eyes a second time, the man sees perfectly.

What would I have done had I been in Noah's situation? When the waters subside, Noah and his family are faced with starting all over again, trusting God as they proceeds to rebuild their lives. The same is true of the blind man. His life is totally changed having put his faith in Jesus. Many times, you and I are faced with needing to start over again, rebuilding our trust in the Lord after some disaster, personal, familial, or otherwise.  Jesus takes us by the hand, as he did the blind man, and leads us forward. We are not always sure of where Jesus is leading us or how he is guiding us.  Sometimes we may wonder if Jesus is even aware of the challenges we face on a given day or the drama we may have just waded through and that prompts us to ask: "Where are you, Jesus?" or "Jesus, do you care that my 'boat' is being tossed about by the turbulent waves of life?" Or we may say to Jesus: "Lord, I feel like I am drowning! I don't know how to move forward!"

Help me, Jesus, trust in you!  Help me see clearly as you lead me through the turbulent waters of life!

Questioning Jesus; Questioning God

When the people  heard Jesus say “before Abraham came to be, I AM “, they  picked up stones to throw at Him. How can Jesus claim to be I AM, to have existed before Abraham came into being, as He was not even 50 years of age. They were also sure that Jesus was possessed when he said: “[W]hoever keeps my word will never see death.”  How can Jesus say that people who keep His word will never see death, when Abraham is deceased, as were Isaac, Jacob and David and so many other ancestors of their faith? 

   

How easy it is to condemn people, to react strongly towards them when we, or I,  do not understand about what they are talking.  Hearers of Jesus’ claims thought he was crazy, a possessed man, a dangerous man. “We’ve got to stop Him, they argued, and took action to kill Him by attempting to stone Him to death.  At whom am I throwing stones by my bitter words or rebellious behaviors? Or at whom do I want stones thrown? And have you or I ever uttered the words “we’ve got to stop” them/him/her?

 Without eyes of faith, we do not see God at work. Without faith, we do not realize that any and every reality—the good or the bad, the beautiful and the ugly—is  clay in the hands of God.  The Divine Potter is always at work transforming  people and all of creation into the person and the reality that God designed it to be.   Like Peter who rebuked Jesus when He said that “the Son of man is destined to suffer grievously, to be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and to be put to death, and to be raised up on the third day,” we, too, often reject that which we do not understand. “It can’t be!  We’ve got to stop it! The weeds must be pulled out! That child has got to be aborted. We can’t handle the difficulties he/she will present” and on and on!

What attitudes in me need to change to be brought into harmony with God’s plan of salvation, especially when things are not the way I think they should be in the world of today, especially when we are on the way to Jerusalem “to be put to death, and to be raised up” in Christ Jesus as a new reality, a new person?