The Good News for the Day, April 26, 2024
Friday in the Fourth Week of Easter (283)
Jesus speaks to those us inspired by Him: “Don’t let your heart get troubled. You have some faith in God; have faith in me, too.
In my Father’s home there are many places to stay. If there weren’t, I would have told you so—because I am on my way to get a place ready for you. If I do, I am going to get a place ready for you, I will come back and take you to myself, so that where I am, you may be, too.
Where I am going you already know the way.”
Thomas said to him, “Sir, we have no idea where you are going; how can we possibly know the way there?”
Jesus explained to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14).
It is a living faith to stop thinking in terms of a physical place to come or go – or even to think of it as a temporal passage. Faith sees these images as referring to the state of grace – to passage and transformation, to changing one’s self from the state of “flesh” with our bad habits, self-deception, and lazy mind into a spiritual personality.
We become a different state! We stop being this. We start being that as a complete person.
We go His way, we see the world as His truth, and we truly live His life and become one with the Father, the creator of the universe.
His “Way” means we stop being “my way or the highway.” His Way means an open heartedness about other people, listening to them reflectively, with understanding and sympathy – and learning from others not to trust our selves so much as to trust God’s world and the truth it offers through others. Our heart does not get troubled over differences but finds them valuable.
His “Truth” involves an understanding that I am reluctant to change in response to truth, I am reluctant to accept uncomfortable truth, and I am reluctant to believe that the world of Spirit offers joy truer than the comforts of the flesh. His truth makes a person consistent – growing to realize how like others we are, and how to stay rooted in God’s world rather than an abstract ideology.
“His Life” means living the same way he did 2000 years ago with kindness, healing, courage, and obedience to God’s law rather than shallow human understanding of law. His life involves choosing to live a lifetime of generous loving, a consistent and practical commitment to the general good, and prayerful reflection to stay the course, and to keep our heart (broken) open to the needs of the world.
The Good News is faith that, though incomplete, growing, and aware of shortcomings, we who follow Jesus have wholeheartedly committed to that pursuit of life, sharing, and kindness which yields a permanent joy to our souls. It is our home – that life, that state.
jorisheise 