Bible
Study: James 4, 1 to 10 and Mark 9, 30 to 37.
Have you noticed that the
moment the word “sin” is mentioned, our minds immediately begin to run through
the bad things we have done? Even our Catechism defines sin as “an offence
against God either by thought, word or deed.” Our orientation towards the
concept of sin unfortunately is one-sided and today St. James in his ever practical
style of writing throws in a completely new light to our traditional
understanding of what sin is all about.
According to St. James, sin
is not only the bad things you did, sin is also the GOOD THINGS which you ought
to have done but refused to do. In other words, when we examine our conscience
we should not only search through our minds to find out what evils we have
committed, we should also ask ourselves, “what good things were we capable of
doing that we refused to do?”
Just before I woke up this
morning, I had a dream. A man died, was brought before God for judgment and
there were a lot of people watching him but to everyone’s surprise, the man was
asked to mention all the good deeds he did while he was alive on earth. And somehow,
he was not able to mention very many. It was actually a very funny encounter
because as we all watched, the man really had a very difficult time remembering
his good deeds.
Then I woke up, picked up my
bulletin to reflect on the readings and coincidentally I saw the words of St.
James: “Whoever knows what is right to do and fails to do it, for him is sin.”
It was like God was telling me the content of the readings already in dream form.
Dear friends in Christ, we
all need to change our orientation as regards to sin because truly on the day
of Judgement, it is not so much our evil deeds that shall count but our good deeds.
Remember, the questions we shall be asked: “When I was hungry, did you give me
food to eat? When thirsty, did you give me water? When in sick or in prison,
did you visit me? Did you pray for me?”
After going through today’s Gospel
passage, I had to ask myself: “How come Jesus refused to allow his disciples
stop the man who was casting out demons in his name? I believe the answer is
simple: Praying for others in Jesus name is a GOOD DEED. And so long as there
is nothing wrong in praying and casting our demons, there was no need for them
to stop this man just because he was not one of them.
Note that the name of this
man who was casting out demons in Jesus name is not even mentioned! This is to
tell us that we do not need to be among the disciples to tap into the power of
the name of Jesus. We do not need to go to Seminary before we can cast out
demons or heal people. To put it succinctly, even a Muslim can use the name of
Jesus and people will be cured! It is not a question of who we are but a
question of the power in the name of Jesus.
I get angry when people go
as far as subjecting themselves to various forms of emotional and physical
abuse all in the name of seeking for prayers from the so-called “powerful” man
of God. You see people being beaten to a pulp or made to eat grass or used as
foot mats because a rogue is claiming power that does not belong to him! We forget
that it is not the man of God that does the healing but the very name of Jesus.
By the NAME OF JESUS, EVERY KNEE SHALL BOW AND EVERY TONGUE CONFESS!
Dear friends, let us never
miss an opportunity to do a GOOD DEED even if that good deed is just to pray
for people. We don’t need any qualification to pray. So long as we have faith,
we should pray!
Above all, let us begin to
focus on good deeds rather than bad. When next you examine your conscience at
the end of the day, don’t count your evil deeds, instead try to find out if you
did all the good things you could do, count your positive achievements, count
the great ideas that came to your mind on how to make our world better, count
the number of people who will sleep better this night because of their
encounter with you, count the many times you saw people in need and stopped by
to alleviate their plight even without them coming to you to beg.
How about if we decide to
keep a journal of GOOD DEEDS and try to write down our good deeds every day and
each day try to outdo the good things we did the previous day? You may be
surprised that this journal would be the only thing that would follow you when
you die and this journal will be used on the day of your judgement.
Let us pray:
Lord Jesus, I want to be your
friend. Help me to free myself from the desire to compete with the world for
material things but to realise that my goal is heaven. Amen.
Good morning.
Be Happy. Live Positive. Have Faith. It is well with you.
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