Rom 11:29-36 / Lk 14:12-14
One of the perennial mistakes we make is trying to figure out what God is thinking and why God did this or didn't do that. It gets us in all kinds of trouble, sometimes even causing us to doubt that God really cares for us or even bothers to give us a second glance after creating us. That's the bad idea that the deists of the enlightenment wandered into, and there are plenty of equally bad ideas about God still making the rounds.
The crunch can come when we face a tragedy like the cancer death of a little child or the freeway death of a devoted mother of eight. And we can really go over the top when we think about the Holocaust or the thousands of bodies in mass graves in dozens of countries around the world. "I want answers, and I want them now!" we may in effect be saying. If so, we're wasting our breath, for our time is not God's time, nor is our schedule God's. Paul says it in today's first reading: "How inscrutable his judgments, how unsearchable his ways."
So what are we left with? Both our faith in the goodness of God and our personal experience, part of it directly intuitive, that God abides with us and never leaves, and that his love for us is undying. In the words of the poet, "That's all you know, and all you need to know."
