One of the hardest things in the spiritual life that I keep coming up against is how I measure the faithfulness of God that Saint Paul talked about in the First Reading by my faithfulness that Jesus spoke about in the parable in the Gospel.
I’m not faithful. I continually mess up, sin, and more often than not completely forget prayer or understanding my call to serve others. I have to try and try again after these failures. I have to start over from what feels like scratch so many times, and yet this is my personal way of expressing faithfulness to God. My way is very, very human.
Because that’s what I am—human!
And so it’s extremely difficult to understand the faithfulness of God.
Just as His ways are higher than our ways, His faithfulness is so much greater and better than our expression of faithfulness. God is faithful to us at every moment. From before we were born He has been present to us, guided us, protected us, and wanted every good thing for us. He has never stopped being faithful even though we have experienced difficulty, struggle, pain, and what feels like separation from Him.
Knowing that God’s faithfulness is so much greater and more perfect than mine is a relief to me. I know that His faithfulness doesn’t leave me when I need to begin again, that He is always calling me to come back to Him, to listen to Him, to sit at His feet.
It’s this continual returning to Him that God calls us to live out in preparation for His return. To recognize when we stumble and need to begin again and to stay awake to His presence in our lives at all times.
Our reliance on and relationship with the Lord is what staying awake is, to not let the richness of a life lived with Him leave us unprepared for when we meet Him face-to-face.
Come back to Him. // Christy IsingerClick to tweet