God is for us, not against us (Tuesday, Week 2, Year 1)

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Introduction

God is for us, not against us. This is the assurance we have. Let us continue to live fully conscious of this assurance.

Reflection

We keep in mind the fact that there was already a crisis of faith among the Jewish Christians to whom the Letter to the Hebrews was originally addressed. A crisis of faith in the sense that many of them were sorely tempted to revert to Jewish worship. Among other things, what they might have seriously needed to hear is a kind of strong assurance that God won’t overlook their work and the love which they have shown in serving the Church. And that is what the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews clearly pointed out in the portion for today (cf. Heb. 6:10-20). This assurance needed to be reestablished in order to reinforce or strengthen the hope and faith of those Jewish Christians. 

In the same manner, we may be going through crisis too strong for us to bear, to the extent that we are even contemplating leaving the Church and giving up on God. There is a message for us that God has not forgotten and will never overlook those acts of kindness and love which we have shown no matter how little they are.

As evident in the words of Jesus in the gospel (cf. Mk. 2:23-28), we may have to be reminded often that God is for us, not against us. Even the so-called Sabbath laws (which we may understand as supposedly put in place for the sake of God) are not meant to suffocate us. God could not have said or ruled that it is forbidden for us to reach out for food on a Sabbath when any of us may find himself or herself in a situation of extreme hunger on a Sabbath. If any law (whether religious or civil) does not take the good of the human person into account, it does not qualify to be a law.

All in all, our assurance is that God is for us, not against us. On the basis of this assurance, let us continue to do what is right and acceptable, always seeking to promote life and human dignity at all times and in every situation just as God does.    



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