Encouragement

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“In your love remember me and the kindness that you have shown from days of old” Psalms 25:6

Faith as we all know is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
Abraham was called the father of faith because he believed in God blindly, totally and with complete submission of his entire being .
Sometimes in life, we do not appreciate when we have our loved ones with us. It is only when they go far away from us that we realize what we have lost. I came across an extension of a popular saying that we never know what we have until we lose it but the truth is that we always knew what we had, we just did not expect to lose it.

Jesus admonished the Israelites that they had not realized nor recognized who was standing in their presence, recalling the fact that when Jonah had preached in Nineveh, the people had repented with sack cloths and ashes and there was something greater than Jonah standing in their midst but the Israelites could neither see nor understand that the Messiah was in their midst. It was only after the Lord was crucified, buried and rose again that they realized what a precious opportunity they had lost. They had the Son of God right in front of them but they had rejected him. Their faith had been weak but when Jesus accomplished His plan of salvation on the cross, their faith jumped by leaps and bounds.

In William Shakespeare’s famous saga; ‘Hamlet’; we see how he declares his love for Ophelia after her death with these soul tearing words; “I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum.” As we know when Ophelia was alive, Hamlet pretended that he did not love her and even rejected her, though he loved her deeply from his heart. The intensity of his love was manifested only after he loses her. Sometimes, we do the same, we deny our feelings, we act indifferent to the ones we love and turn them away. When they go away and keep a distance from us in order to fulfill our wish, we realize how the former happier times have become a dream, a thing of the past. How much time has lapsed since we last smiled in joy.
A kind word draws love near and a harsh word drives love away. When the line is overshot and words are finally taken at their face value, a precious friendship is lost and love silently tip toes away with a broken heart.
Sometimes, we reach out in order to make others happy but end up getting hurt ourselves. This causes us to build a cocoon of self defense around our heart in order to prevent it from being hurt again. We then become apprehensive of reaching out again or we reach out through other means so that they never feel lonely and can still experience our love.

What we see will always be misleading. It takes a deeper understanding of faith and perhaps time as well to overcome all the pain that has been caused, to re-write a new set of words that can redeem and heal. To be able to step out again and look towards the sunrise with a sure faith that the Lord will return to us the joy that we once knew. Until then, we can only place all our intentions in His Sacred Heart and allow Him to work in His own way rather than do anything in our own way. To know that without his control, nothing can be set right. If we rely on our own actions, we would be found wanting. Just as Moses did not pay heed to the Lord in the desert to speak to the rock first but rather went ahead and struck the rock with the rod relying on His own strength and the earlier incident at Meribah when he had struck the rock to draw water, then, at the Lord’s command forty years earlier. Since he had disobeyed God in the second round instead of paying attention to His words, he was denied the privilege of stepping into the promised land.

We read in Psalms 62:7; "In God is my salvation and my glory: the rock of my strength, and my refuge, is in God." King David praises the Lord in 2 Samuel 22:1-4; “The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; The God of my rock; in him will I trust: he is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my high tower, and my refuge, my Saviour.” St. Paul further explains to the Corinthians that we all drink the same spiritual drink: from the spiritual Rock which is Christ. Truly, He is the Rock of all Ages on whom we can trust and rest our cares upon. He will never change and remain forever the same.

May the faith that we hold strong never flicker but burn brightly under the watchful eyes of the Lord. May he increase our faith to a magnanimous proportion so that we can use this same faith as our stronghold, the solid rock and corner stone to build the foundation of our life so that we are prepared when our time comes to face the day that will test our faith.

Maria Franco

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