The Good News for the Day, May 10, 2024
Friday of the Sixth Week of Easter (295)
Jesus says to people He inspires “The fact is: you’re going to cry, to mourn—while the world feels pretty good. You’ll grieve, but your grief will become joy.
When a woman is in labor, she is in great pain—the time has come. Once she has given birth to a child, she remembers the pain no longer. She is happy her child has been born into the world. That is the kind of pain you feel now.
I will see you again, and your hearts will be glad—and nobody will take your gladness away from you.
When it all comes together, you won’t ask me about anything. The fact is: Anything you ask the Father for—in the Family—He will give it to you.” (John 16)
I suspect that many people misunderstand this last line because we all tend to understand Scripture in material, literal, and even selfish terms. We would like God to give us not just what we need but “anything you ask for.”
But Jesus is speaking heart to heart, and soul to soul about what is truly important, spiritual, and eternal – not about the passing things of this world and this generation.
If you want true peace of soul, yes, ask and you shall receive. If you want to overcome bitterness, resentment, and vengeful feelings – ask, and you will receive.
How?
The more you try to love the God of nature and time permanently, the more you work at understanding and caring for your brothers and sisters – equal under God, and the more you see yourself as a common beloved child of God, these afflictions of soul melt away.
You find your self swimming in the sea instead of stamping your feet, and you feel yourself flying free of these chains, released by the discovery that they are self-inflicted.
Our human blaming, echoes of earlier injuries sustained or imagined, give way to the truth that we are just hurting our self.
We have become – in these instances, like a burdened past-time pregnant woman carrying living tissue that ironically is your own new self waiting to be born. A metaphor that Jesus is using often is misunderstood. Jesus calls on our faith to give birth to a new person, a new kind of self, a new born child of God – one whose whole life is breathing the Holy Spirit instead of mere oxygen, motivated to love every face you see, and aimed at creating – discovering – the kingdom of God all around you – to becoming a child of God playing with the wondrous toys he has been giving all along.
This commitment to the love of God and neighbor which can change us so dramatically – and keep us growing in faith and love is the whole meaning of resurrection.
The risen Lord now breathes in our world, He sees the world through our eyes, He reaches out his hands to rest on the bowed shoulders of suffering people.
God knows what we want spiritually and offers it. He awaits our joyful acceptance.
jorisheise 