Endurance

Sometimes life is wonderful and sometimes life is tough – very tough: full of tears and disappointments, of weakness and pain.

Sometimes we are overwhelmed by these things: we are frozen in fear, we wallow in grief and worry.

Sometimes we think it is impossible for us to dig ourselves out of the mess we are in.

If that’s what we think, we’re right – it is impossible for us, but not for God.

In today’s first reading (Is 65:17-21), we have a glorious vision of hope:

Lo, I am about to create
new heavens and a new earth;

The things of the past
shall not be remembered
or come to mind.

Instead, there shall always be

rejoicing and happiness
in what I create…

The message is a powerful one: that God himself will make all things new, that the things we now weep and worry about will not even be a blip on our radar screen, and that our joy and happiness will be absolutely complete.

In the meantime, what do we have? We have hope, based on faith and on the power of God’s word.

The power of this word is demonstrated in today’s Gospel (Jn 4:43-54) in which a man endures not only the terminal illness of his child but having his plea apparently rebuffed with offhand cynicism by Christ himself!

The man passes the test. He does not collapse into a puddle of rejection and self-pity: he perseveres and puts his faith in Christ when he says the child will recover. This faith is wondrously rewarded and becomes contagious, spreading to his entire household.

So too we need to persevere with our faith in the Lord Jesus, continuing to walk forward through life, no matter what it may throw at us: even when we experience rejection and negativity from our brothers and sisters in Christ.

As today’s Psalm reminds us

O LORD, thou hast brought up my soul from the grave:
thou hast kept me alive,

that I should not go down to the pit.

Sing unto the LORD, O ye saints of his,
and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness.

For his anger endureth but a moment;
in his favour is life:

weeping may endure for a night,
but joy cometh in the morning.

Psalm 30:4-6