For this week’s Gospel I imagine Jesus standing and preaching in one of these Window’s computer backgrounds to show us about God’s power and love for us. The point is simple yet complex for our hearts. God made everything. God is in control. Somehow in nature flowers and grass continue to bloom and grow each year. God knows, loves and cares for everything in creation, including us.
The pragmatist in each of us rejects this week’s Gospel: Is God going to pay my rent/mortgage this month? Really? Perhaps the skeptic in us points to the millions who die of hunger each day and how much some sort of ‘God’ is taking care of them. The point to the Gospel is not that God is going to do everything for us but that God knows us, loves us, and cares for us.
For the pragmatist: No, God will not pay your bills this month, but we are invited to recognize God’s place as our creator and that as we work to take care of ourselves and others to remember that all the gifts we have been given come from God.
For the skeptic: God gave us free will to enable us to love Him and others. God calls us to participate in the ongoing creation of the world by being his hands and feet to take care of others. St. Teresa of Avila said: “Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world.”
The danger for both the pragmatist and the skeptic in all of us is that our actions and ideas become the center of the universe; we make ourselves into the gods of the world (an added pressure we really don’t need!) which only distances us from being able to allow God to be present and in control through every worry and joy that comes our way.
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