My brothers and sisters, doing the right thing rarely guarantees an easy life. In fact, standing up for the truth often invites resistance, ...
My brothers and sisters, doing the right thing rarely guarantees an easy life. In fact, standing up for the truth often invites resistance, jealousy, and sometimes outright hostility.
Look at Paul and Barnabas in our First Reading today. They are doing exactly what God asked them to do. They are preaching the word of the Lord, and large crowds are gathering to listen. But their success breeds intense jealousy. The leading men and women of the city stir up a persecution and literally run them out of town. From a purely human perspective, this looks like a massive failure. But Paul and Barnabas have a different vision. They shake the dust from their feet and leave, not defeated, but "filled with joy and the Holy Spirit."
They possessed a vision that looked beyond immediate setbacks. This is the exact kind of vision Jesus is trying to impart to Philip in the Gospel. Philip says, "Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us." Philip is looking right at Jesus, but he is missing the reality. Jesus patiently replies, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father."
To follow Christ means we must learn to recognize His voice and see His hand at work, even when the world contradicts us. We will face our own versions of Antioch. We will face professional jealousy, misunderstandings, and seasons where our hard work seems to be rejected. When those moments come, we have a choice. We can become bitter and discouraged, or we can look to the words of Jesus, who promises that whatever we ask in His name, He will do, so that the Father may be glorified.
The victory of the Christian life is not the absence of trouble; it is the presence of an unbreakable joy in the midst of it. Today, ask the Lord to heal your spiritual vision. Let His voice be the loudest one in your life, so that no matter what dust you have to shake off your feet, you may walk forward in the absolute victory of His love.
No comments