What happens when we accept God’s love for us?
True faith means opening to God’s love for us and giving witness to the power of that love in our lives. When the prophet Isaiah tells the people that God will provide for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines and destroy death forever, he is calling them to a deeper faith, so that they will rely upon God to love them and reveal his love through them. Our victory banquet comes when we put our faith in that love and its power in our lives. Psalm 23 echoes the image of the victory banquet – you spread the table before me, my cup overflows – as an affirmation of the psalmist’s complete dependence on the Lord who walks this journey with him, guiding him so long as he remains open to the love of God.
The inverse of the victory banquet is described by Jesus to the chief priests and elders in the parable of the wedding feast in Matthew's Gospel, a story in which many ignore the king’s invitation and go away; one guest even comes in not dressed in a wedding garment, utterly unprepared. When we are prepared to let our lives be changed by the Lord’s love for us, a state evident not externally by our garment but inwardly in terms of our internal disposition, then we are open and can put our faith in the power of that love in our lives. Paul describes his own internal disposition of openness to God’s providence to the Philippians: I have learned the secret of being well fed and of going hungry, but knowing regardless that I can do all things in him who strengthens me. Paul can endure anything because God’s love is with him; he wants the Philippians to have the same hope and the same trust in the power of that love. We are likewise called to believe that that love is enough for us, and to accept that love, that we might be strengthened and transformed, and thus ready to endure all things because we are open to all the Lord has to reveal.
This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com
No comments:
Post a Comment