Not a Hair of Your Head

 

The love of a mother is often the most powerful, unconditional, lavish and compassionate love, that one will ever experience. The prophet from today's scripture suggests that, even if a mother could forgetting her child, our God promises, “I will not forget you.” God is present here to us in an everlasting and powerful manner, as a mother who always and without fail cares for her child.  We are forever inscribed on the hand of our God, and burrowed beneath the shadow of his wings.  Our awesome God continues to watch over us.

The Gospel shares with us today that through this covenantal relation in which we are part of God's life as he is in ours, we do not need to worry or be concerned about our welfare, those who desire to harm us, or the needs and concerns which constantly gnaw at us.  God will make sure hat we are okay.  Too often our fears and anxieties send us scrambling for brighter light, loader sounds, and stronger tastes, all in order that we might have a sense of security or meaning. 

Of course the problem becomes that we can spend a lot of time and energy trying to gain authority, prestige, and to accumulate wealth, all to have what we have achieved come falling down around us.  Seeing folks at the end of their lives, I have seen them mostly naked, requiring help to dress, eat, bathe - and other things - all apparently disassociated from their wealth and titles.  Yet as I wander through the peoples I have encountered in life, it is not the rich and famous whom I can recall, but those who were kind and generous, who loved, served, and had time and a place for others.

This is what Pope Francis is trying to help us remember.  We cannot allow the need to have or acquire stuff get in the way of our relationship with God and with others.  Too often we let our culture, our want and whims, to lead us around by the nose.  We are challenged to develop a vision of the Kingdom of God and use our gifts and talents to achieve that end.

St. Paul will ask the question in one of his letters, "If God is for us, who can be against."  The love of God enable the Holy Spirit to enable us to put our life in order.  O course that order always includes putting God first in all things.