Saturday, April 5, 2014

Reflection for Saturday, April 5, 2014

SATURDAY OF THE FOURTH WEEK OF LENT

As I read today’s gospel reading, I think of the times in my life that I’ve wanted God to show himself to me. In the moments when I felt lonely and lost, I begged God to reveal himself to me. Many times I believed that my prayers were left unanswered because I didn’t see what I wanted or expected to see. I had limited myself in how I believed God could appear to me. The thing is that God was there, but my expectations of how God could appear interfered with my seeing him.

In today’s gospel, we see something similar. As others refer to Jesus as the Christ, the chief priests and Pharisees refuse to see it. They’re blinded by their expectation of how the Christ should look and act. Certainly the Christ would not lower himself and come from a place like Galilee, which was a place that was looked down upon because the law was not zealously observed there. He wouldn’t come from a place like this but rather a place where the law was enforced. Jesus broke a lot of laws and challenged the law followers so he couldn’t possibly be the Christ because he would be with the chief priests and Pharisees, not against them.

Sometimes we can box God into similar restraints: “God would never show up in a situation like this”, “God can’t possibly be speaking to us through this person”, “God would never allow this to happen”, etc. But when we limit God to our expectations, we miss out on how he is working in us and in our lives. Lent is an opportunity for us to look at our faith through different lenses. Perhaps somewhere in this season there sits an invitation to look at how the Christ is speaking to us through an unlikely situation. 


Robby Francis
Griesedieck Hall Campus Minister

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