“Though I thought I had toiled in vain,
and for nothing, uselessly, spent my strength,
yet my reward is with the Lord,
my
recompense is with my God.” As we hear
these words from the prophet Isaiah, we may reflect upon how often on our
journey of faith, we may be following what we think is the will of God in our
lives, and we may feel like we have no results to show for it. That is what the message of our secular
culture is all about – success concerns results, getting things done, producing
something useful, making money or accumulating material possessions. In our work or in our personal lives, we are
often impatient if those results don’t come quickly, And if the results don’t
come quick enough, we can feel need to change course in order to show that we
are getting things done. When I was a
missionary, results were often hard to recognize, and if I had judged what I
was doing by the criteria set by our secular world, I probably would have given
up in a sense of failure and lack of accomplishment.
Yet, the ways of our world are not
often God’s ways. God’s plan is to lead
us to salvation, not to bring us earthly accomplishment and glory. Through the
prophet Isaiah, the Lord says his people: I will make you a light to the
nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.
As we commemorate Holy Week, as we
accompany Jesus as he carries his cross, we hear Jesus tell his disciples how
this week will end for him, all a part of God’s plan of salvation for all of
humanity. May we never forget that God’s
ways are often so very radical compared to the ways of our world. As we complete our journey with Jesus during
Holy Week, may we never lose sight of where we are going.
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