Opera (noun): Latin for “works”

Today’s first reading (from Genesis 16) sounds like a soap opera: a wife letting her husband sleep with the maid and then abusing the maid.

Sarai initiated this whole mess by not trusting the Lord and by trying to achieve her goals by any means necessary. God, however, brings good out of this immoral scenario: even bestowing abundant blessings on the slave girl.

So too we get in trouble when we think that we are smarter than God and that we can cut whatever corners we like to achieve what we want. God's justice is inescapable (yet so too is his mercy inexhaustible for the truly repentant).

In the end, no matter how big a mess we humans make of things, God can always bring out of it a greater good by the power of his love and the mystery of his will.

How much more fully then may God’s blessings abound when we do his will!