We hear Jesus tell us the importance of forgiveness, and he tells a parable about how someone who has had his sins forgiven him by his master still has a difficult time forgiving the sins of another. Then, in the first reading from the book of Daniel, we hear about a young men who is thrown into the fiery furnace by King Nebuchadnezzar for his unwillingness to worship foreign idols. Rather than curse the king, or being mad at the Lord, this young man named Azariah sings a song to express his unwavering faith in the Lord.
When we are going through the fiery furnace of the sufferings and challenges we have in life, we probably don’t want to sing a song of faith. We would most often want to say: “My God, why have your forsaken me? Why have you left me?” Yet, the psalmist today tells the Lord to remember his mercy, to have the Lord teach us his ways and make known his paths. We often think we know what is good for us, we often go to God knowing what prayers we want him to grant to us, in the exact way we want them answered. I thought about a popular Grath Brooks song, "Unanswered Prayers," which says: “Sometimes I thank God, for unanswered prayers. Remember when you're talkin', to the man upstairs And just because he doesn't answer, doesn't mean he doesn't care. Some of God's greatest gifts, are unanswered prayers.”
Perhaps God not answering our prayers in the way we want him to is the way he answers our prayers. May we have the faith to thank God for the prayers he answers, and may we trust in his wisdom and mercy for those prayers that are unanswered as well. May we feel confident in our faith when prayers go unanswered, when we are going through in the fiery furnace, when we are struggling to forgive someone for the harm they have done to us.
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