04-07-2020 Hearing & Doing

I will admit as we near mid-week of the last week of lent I have not done a very good job of keeping to writing about the daily readings. I have for the most part kept up with the readings and listened for God’s message in them. But taking the time to sit here and put what I learn into text has been a challenge. Feeling that I have a lack of time mostly is to to blame. It’s not that I don’t like to do it. Actually, I really like it. But it is the pull of so many other things that keeps me from sitting here and doing it.

I started writing this because I felt a call or I heard a call (I think) to do it. But acting on it or doing it regularly is where I have fallen short. Isaiah (IS 49:1-6) in today’s first reading is foretelling that Jesus will not fall short. He will do as He is commanded and be sacrificed for the world’s sin and thereby bring Jacob and all of Israel (and us) back to God. Jesus sings of God’s salvation through his actions just like the Psalm says (71:1-2, 3-4A, 5AB-6AB, 15 AND 17).

Judas. Do you have to say anything more about the Gospel (JN 13:21-33, 36-38)? I find it interesting though that Judas took the morsel and Satan entered him. That actually scares me. Can Satan enter anyone anytime? I (although don’t take my word for it as I am no scholar) think if you keep Jesus in your heart there is no room for Satan. Judas must have opened himself to Satan and the evil that came from him.

The other striking thing that I find in the Gospel is when Jesus tells his disciples as Judas leaves “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and he will glorify him at once. My children, I will be with you only a little while longer. You will look for me, and as I told the Jews, ‘Where I go you cannot come,’ so now I say it to you.” They only hear that He will physically be with them a little while longer. They completely miss His message of being glorified and DOING what he was called to do. If I put myself in their position knowing what I know about Who they were with I am dumbfounded at their lack of foresight. Being that close to God through Jesus seems like it could have brought awe and joy but instead they only heard about what was going to immediately affect them. They were going to physically lose their Leader.

How many times are we hearing something and only shortsightedly seeing the immediate effect on ourselves? Are missing opportunity to realize we are closer to God then we think? Are we missing the opportunity to recognize growth because of pain? Am I not investing my time in what brings me closer to God?