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 one of the young men who is thrown into the
fiery furnace by King Nebuchadnezzar for an unwillingness to worship foreign
idols. Yet, rather than curse the king,
or being mad at the Lord, Azariah sings a song to express his unwavering faith
in the Lord.
When we are going through the fiery
furnace of the sufferings of 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?”
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. Garth
Brooks had a song called “Thank God for unanswered prayers,” and there is a lot
of wisdom in that title and in the message of the song. 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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