Jas 4:1-10 / Mk 9:30-37
How often we find ourselves putting out good money for things that look good, but turn out to be shoddy and worthless. How many kids’ new toys don’t even make it home before they’ve begun to fall apart? How many clothes have we purchased that barely made it past the first trip to the laundry or dry cleaners? And how many legislatures have had to pass “lemon laws” to help the victims of sleek-looking automobiles that fall apart fast? Far, far too many! The shabbiness and pointlessness of it all is frustrating and demoralizing as well.
When we shop, we look for something that will last. And the same is true when we’re choosing our friends: we look for people of substance, people with staying power. But if that’s what we seek in others, shouldn’t it be our own highest priority as we set out to construct our own lives? Indeed so.
Staying power, the ability to set a right course and then hold to it, is a quality that marked Jesus’ whole life, and it’s a quality that should be conspicuous at all times in our own. How else will God’s kingdom ever come to be within us and around us? The challenge in standing firm and holding to course is that in the heat of “battle” the din can grow so loud and confusing that we lose our way. It can become so terrifying that we lose heart and flee. This is what could have happened to Jesus, but it did not, because at the very core of His being He knew Who He was and what was His mission.
May God help each of us to find that clear sense of self and of the mission that He has in mind for us. And may He bless our efforts to be faithful, and stand firm and true, just as Jesus did to the very end.
