Tell It to Your Children!

Posted: 18 Mar 2009 12:00 AM PDT
Dt 4:1, 5-9 / Mt 5:17-19
One of the most common complaints between husbands and wives is that they take each other for granted. And how predictable that is! Two people live in the same house, share the same life, follow the same daily routines, doing what needs to be done, keeping things afloat. It takes conscious effort not to settle into seeing one another’s goodness and caring as no more than one’s right and no great gift. What an illusion that is and what an extraordinary presumption.
If we do that to one another, what surprise is there that we regularly do the same to the Lord. We take for granted His wonderful gifts, and we so easily call them our own. And some of us persist in that illusion until the very moment when we’re called to give them back. What a stark and dreadful awakening that can be.

Thankfulness for life and for all of God’s gifts is the starting point for anyone who seeks to be truly wise. But it’s no burden. To see the truth of how undeservedly beloved we are is to find some sense of how valuable and important we tiny, mortal creatures are to the Creator of this grand universe.

“Tell it to your children,” says today’s Old Testament reading. And so we must. But tell it to yourself first, over and over again: The dear Lord Who made me loves me with an everlasting love, and He will never let me go, never let me perish.
Thank you, dear Lord!