English: OFM General Curia : Francis of Assisi and Jesus Christ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

DEvotional thought of the Day:

 ³³  Set your hearts on his kingdom first, and on God’s saving justice, and all these other things will be given you as well. ³⁴  So do not worry about tomorrow: tomorrow will take care of itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.‘Matthew 6:33-34 (NJB)

537         You take everything so lightly that I am reminded of the old story. The cry went up: “There is a lion coming!” And the naturalist answered: “Why tell me? I catch butterflies.”  (1)

A few days ago, I asked what the four shepherds of God I named above and the reader would talk about, were they found together.

An atheirst and pastors were the first to respond, A joke about them calling Francis A sissi, a quesiton about why two of them would be there, a couple other comments, no one taking the matter all that seriously. Until the final comment – that these incredible men would talk about God, and His gifts of mercy and love and peace.

I thought of it again, coming across the quote from St Josemaria this morning.  We as people will think about everything but the Kingdom of God.  We will be anxious over the state of our nation, ticked off at the government, worried about our health, we’ll struggle over finances, we will concern ourselves about the morality of others, but how often does our heart find itself in awe of God’s presence.  How often do we contemplate the depth of His love?  How often are we willing to place ourselves comepltely in His care, and then live a life that imitates those as they imitated Christ Jesus?

How often are we willing to see God at the center of our lives?  Or are we unwilling to give up that throne?

As I tweeted this mornign, “We trust God with the infinite eternity, but will we trust Him with the finite now?”

Our Faith must not be confused  with our faithfulness, for if we depend on our being faithful, we’ve made ourselves into idols.  Faith is trusting in His faithfulness, to lean upon His goodness, to strive to find rest in Him, to prayt hat the Holy Spirit would help us to do so.  For we don’t enter His presence by our faithfulness, He draws us there… and there we learn to trust Him. .. more and more.  To be in awe that HE would love us, that He would be merciful.

So pray that I, and that you, would relaize where we dwell more often, that we would be open to God revealing to us His grace, That we would learn to be as excited as children on Christmas, as we contemplate His grace, both for what it means eternally, and what it means today.

(1)  Escriva, Josemaria (2011-01-31). Furrow (Kindle Locations 2325-2326). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edi

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