Bible
Study: Romans 14, 7 to 12. And Luke 15, 1 to 10.
Given that
we are made in God’s image and likeness, it means that God is capable of anger
as well as joy. If certain things could make God angry with us, it also follows
that there are certain things that makes God very happy and that which makes
God dance because of us is REPENTANCE.
Jesus said
to us in our Gospel passage this morning: “There is more joy in heaven over one
sinner who repents than over the ninety-nine righteous persons who need no
repentance.” This is not to say that righteousness by itself does not bring
happiness to God, rather the point is, the happiness God gets over one sinner
who repents from his evil ways is greater than the happiness of so many
righteous persons combined.
In other words,
the best gift you can ever give to God is to bring a sinner back to him. If you
can succeed in making a person repent, renounce his former ways and start living
righteously, then I tell you there would be a lot of dancing in heaven because
of you. God is not happy when we become stuck in sin, he is not happy when we
keep turning our backs away from him. His invitation is ever sure, no matter
how far we have walked away from him, today, he is ever ready to receive us
like the father of the prodigal son and there would be feast in heaven the very
day we take that decision.
St. Paul
says to us in today’s first reading, “None of us lives for himself and none of
us dies for himself…”. This means that we only deceive ourselves when we try to
push God aside or assume that we live only for our stomachs. We all came from
God and we shall all return to God after our earthly life and as such we cannot
say God does not have a right to dictate to us how we should live our life. God
is fully in charge, the very life we live even is a borrowed one, we took
breath from God on the day we were conceived and one day we shall stop
breathing and appear before God to give account of what we did with this borrowed
life.
The fact
that our very life does not belong to us but to God is the reason why God is
interested in how we live. As much as he does not force us like robots, he is
very happy when we decide turn away from things he does not like. And turning
away from sin should not make us condemn other people. Since no one’s life
belongs to us, we lack the capacity to fully understand the circumstances
behind a person’s behaviour. Only God who owns the person’s life has what it
takes to judge. So, our attitude towards those we perceive as sinners should be
love not disgust. We should look at them as potential sources of happiness for
God, we should see God’s image in them and try to bring them to the light.
When they
come to church, we shouldn’t have a Pharisaic attitude by pushing them out or
begin to wonder what business they have with Jesus. Instead we should see them
as sick people coming into a hospital for treatment. Jesus himself is the
doctor while we are mere health workers, our job is to ensure that they see the
doctor. Knowing that we ourselves are not immune to sickness, we handle the
sick with gentleness and love. We look forward eagerly to their recovery. We shouldn’t
look at them like corpses waiting for their death or like people or are not
even worthy to associate with the master doctor – Jesus.
Let us
Pray:
Lord
Jesus, my very life belongs to us, help me to use it well knowing that I borrowed
it and would someday have to return it back to you, grant that I may learn to
treat people with respect rather than condemnation. Amen.
Good morning.
Be Happy. Live Positive. Have Faith. It is well with you.
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