Good morning, everyone. In my office, I have a little ceramic plaque, like a little plate, sitting on my windowsill. It was given to me by parishioners a few years ago. This plaque says, “Faith: As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
This is a quote from Joshua 24:15, where the Israelites were given the choice to serve either the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or the false gods of other nations. They were about to enter into the Promised Land, and this quote is from Joshua giving that choice and his decision to follow the Lord. The people of Israel responded, “Far be it for us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods.” Their choice was to follow the One True God over the false gods of other nations.
Israel wasn’t always faithful. They kept returning to these false gods, and had to be keep being called back to the One True God and being reminded of who the One True God is.
In our lives, we too are given the choice between the One True God, our Heavenly Father, and the false gods of the world. These aren’t the ancient gods that the Israelites were tempted by, such as the gods of the Middle East or Egypt or so on. Instead, the false gods we’re temped by are the false gods of worldly goods, human pride and self-centeredness. A false god is anything that becomes more important to us than serving God, and comes between us and God.
The fact is, our human temptation is to be worldly in spirit, focused on the things of the world. We tend to lose focus on what is truly important in our lives: our relationship with Our Lord Jesus Christ, and to serve others instead of ourselves. That desire to serve comes out of our relationship with Christ.
If we are worldly in spirit, we end up regulating our spiritual life to Sundays or certain situations, and not allowing our faith in Christ to influence every moment of our lives. To quote a phrase, we end up “Singing with the angels on Sunday, but living like the Devil the rest of the week”. Like the Israelites, we tend to wander away from the service of God, and follow the false gods of the world.
We need to hear the call of Our Lord to return to Him. Our Lord is waiting for us to return like the father in the parable of the prodigal son: The son who rejected his father and turned away from him. God is calling us when we fall into the trap of worldly things as this prodigal son did. He is waiting for us. We just need to turn back to Him.
(Post Reflection Music: Newsboys – The King is Coming)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
