10 Thus says the LORD: Only after seventy years have elapsed
for Babylon will I visit you and fulfill for you my promise to bring you back
to this place.
11 For I know well the plans I have in mind for you, says
the LORD, plans for your welfare, not for woe! plans to give you a future full
of hope.
12 When you call me, when you go to pray to me, I will
listen to you.
13 When you look for me, you will find me. Yes, when you
seek me with all your heart,
14 you will find me with you, says the LORD, and I will
change your lot; I will gather you together from all the nations and all the
places to which I have banished you, says the LORD, and bring you back to the
place from which I have exiled you.
- Jeremiah 29:10-14
Once there was a woman named Teresa whose suitor Evan went
to another country to work. Before he left, Evan promised Teresa that he would
write her a letter every day. That was before the age of emails. And indeed,
Evan was true to his promise. Every day, the postman would come to Teresa’s
house to bring Evan’s letter. Finally, after one year of relentless letter
writing, they were boyfriend and girlfriend to one another. Teresa and the
postman.
There are instances in our life when we fall in love with
the the means than with the end, when we fall in love with the wrapper than
with gift, with the bridge than with the destiny. Same is true with our journey
of faith. But there is a difference. We have a faithful God. Whatever he had
said and promised he will do it. Whatever he says becomes. In the scripture,
God expressed his enormous love for us. He had created all the wonders of this
world for us to experience his great love for us. However, we had fallen in
love with the means He had employed. We fell in love with the riches of the
created realities, instead of falling in love with the Creator. We fell out of
love from God, as we fall in love to these worldly allurements. Such is our
fall. But despite this God remains to be faithful in his love for us.
Immediately after our fall, God expressed His desire to save
us, to restore the grace in us. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and
between your offspring and hers; He will strike at your head, while you strike
at his heel (Gen 3:15). Throughout the history of our salvation, we experienced
God’s faithfulness to this promise of salvation, and our disobedience to him.
It is an interplay of Yes and No. God says Yes to our salvation. God said YES
to Abraham, to Moses and to Jacob, but they did otherwise. Isn’t it funny to
realize that the story of the Israelites in the Old Testament is our same story
today? God says YES to us. We say No to his Will, and Yes to ourselves. We made
our own plans. We charter our own destiny. We write our own stories. We had
lived our own lives for ourselves. But indeed, many are the plans in our hearts,
but it is the decision of the LORD that endures (Proverbs 19:21). Until we
learn to say NO to our selves, NO to our own plans, No to our own comforts, NO
to the certainties and securities of this world, it is only then we can say YES
to His love. YES to His will. YES to His plan for us. It is only then that we
can be faithful in Him as He is faithful to His promise to us. It is by our constant self denial that we can
be faithful to God. As a holy man once said: It is by being faithful to our NO
that we can be faithful to our YES.
Today, more than ever, we face a crisis in our Church and in
the Society. We face the graft and corruption in our government. We experience
the prevalent moral degradation in every nooks and corners of our communities. We
have become indifferent to the sufferings of the other. We have thought of
ourselves more than the others. We have realize our own plans more than that of
God’s. The crisis in our Church and in the Society is a crisis of faith. Thus,
we have to re-evaluate and examine our Faith in God and the amount of trust we
give to the things we created.
We fall in love to the created realities, to the means God
provided to us that supposed to lead us to Him, that would help us to
understand ourselves. We have more faith in the created realities more than in
the Creator. We have trust in the creation of our hands more than in the hands
of the One who created all, the hands of God.
In our desire to attain the fullness of our lives, time and
again we find ourselves busy realizing our own idea and designs, laying out own
blueprints of our lives. We trust and relay to our own abilities and views. And
time and again we are saddened, frustrated and unsatisfied.
But how does one measure the fullness of life? It is not by the
number of houses we have, amount of riches accumulated, awards received,
positions held. Our life is more than these things. We are worth more than
these. Only in God we can realize our real worth. Only by allowing God to work
in our lives, we can achieved total satisfaction. At the end of our lives, God
will not ask us how much house, cars, money in the bank we have. God will ask
us how we have obeyed his will? How much we have accepted, realized and had
been faithful in His plan for us? How
much we have loved Him? How much we have loved?
Upon returning from his work overseas, Evan came to know
about the relationship of Teresa with the postman. He sought Teresa’s attention
and love, again. And after some times, they get married, Teresa and Evan.
In the end, despite our disobedience and falling out of love
from God, His plan for us will be realized: salvation attained, satisfaction
achieved. For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable (Romans 11:29). His
love never fails, His love for us endures forever (Ps 136:1-2).
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