June 25, 2025 // Wednesday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time
Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s First Reading: Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
Reflect on the Word //
We traipsed across the grassy quadrangle, drenched in sunshine. It was springtime on our college campus, and I could hardly imagine paradise being any more beautiful. And yet, when my friend asked how I was doing, I told her that I was sad.
Despite the bright hope of that spring day, I found myself mourning missed opportunities. I wondered if I had made the right choices that year, and I dwelt upon what could or should have been—just as I have done when friendships faded, when jobs fell through, when relationships broke up.
In those seasons, I have told Jesus over and over, I was just trying to do Your will. I don’t know why things ended this way, but I was just trying to be faithful to You.
Far more than I did at nineteen, Abraham, too, must have grieved lost time and opportunities. He, too, must have been confused by where his faithfulness led him. Here he was, in the evening of his life, facing the prospect of death without ever living the life for which he had hoped.
Had he really come this far into the land the Lord had promised to him, doing as the Lord had told him to do, only to die without descendants to inherit it? He wondered, “O Lord God, what good will your gifts be, if I keep on being childless?” (Genesis 15:2) He expected to have a child by now, grandchildren even, maybe great-grandchildren—a glorious fulfillment of the Lord’s promises to him.
Like Abraham in today’s First Reading, I have yet to see the final fulfillment of the Lord’s plan for my life. I don’t understand why sometimes my attempts at faithful obedience have led to misunderstanding, disappointment, and grief. But I take consolation in His promise to each of us. For He promises us, just as He promised Abraham, that He will honor our faithfulness. We may not see it in the moment, but we can trust that He will be faithful to us when, like Abraham, we put our faith in Him.
Relate to the Lord // Bring to mind today ways in which the Lord has been faithful to you in your life, and ask Him to renew your trust in Him.
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