Daily Reflections Feb 13, 2018

James 1: 12 - 18; Mark 8: 14 - 21.

“I trust in you my Lord. In the midst of my trials, I cling to you. Even in the worst adversity I will not give up on your promise. Protect me from vanity and Strengthen my heart to persevere when life is tough, for you have created me to testify to your glory”.

When life gets rough, the tough gets going. Life has always been full of trials and those with the strongest spirit live to conquer. But is it right that we should break the rules to win? And how long can we live to manipulate our way and take shortcuts by cheating people? Is it right to speak lies, commit treachery and falsely blame others in a bid to hold on to power? Evil is not a path for long-term success.

Each and every person of faith whose life is described in the bible had to undergo trials and be persevering. There are no shortcuts to success and survival; time as a medium, is a great healer and our trials teach patience and persistence as we get strengthened in the struggle. After all the hardships, a human being comes out mature, patient, thoughtful, cautious, calculative and in many cases even charitable. Just like a test of fire brings out the best qualities in gold that help us to understand that gold is highly resistant to chemical reaction and that it shines, we too become highly resistant to hardships and obstacles and after overcoming those struggles we also shine.

The Epistle of James 1: 12 - 18 help us understand that the tests that people must undergo are not sent by God. The Lord has already gifted us with endurance and hope. Through these two raw flavours of endurance and hope, the Lord helps us to build fine qualities that make a human being mature and capable. It is the nature of life that makes life difficult. Just like the ground is hard and rough to an amateur digger and just like a stone is hard to an amateur craftsman. But with long hours of work, development of skills through intelligence, persistence and faith a human being can overcome all difficulties and even obtain fame as an expert.

But during these initial moments of apprenticeship, the devil initiates his attacks to demoralise the person and change that person’s perspective. At this point a person has three choices: (1) To keep the faith, endure, struggle, find solutions intelligently, ask for help, persevere, pray for inspiration and wisdom and be patient until the breakthrough is achieved. (2) Find evil ways to cheat, manipulate, betray and pervert their way to completion; (3) Give up and accept failure.

Even if we have excellent qualities to succeed, the devil will be persistent and send waves of attacks through various bottlenecks, authoritative organisations, our competitors, jealous observants and others. On many occasions the devil will even use our close and loved ones to increase the pressure through other domestic issues not connected to our work and our tasks at hand. We must be wary of such methods the devil uses and these are the moments we must be patient and pray earnestly to the Lord. It is at these difficult moments that we must beseech the Lord and bring out the best in our qualities. And once we overcome all these difficulties and succeed, we will find that we have greater potential and some new-found capabilities. God has made us in His own image and likeness to persevere like He does and bring out the best qualities in what we do, to do good and succeed.

In the Gospel of Mark 8: 14 - 21, Jesus cautions the apostles to be wary of the leaven of the Pharisee. He instructs them not to worry about petty things and he reminds them that with God all things are possible. Leaven is the baker’s trick of vanity. It is with leaven that bread and pastries fluff up, become crispy, look beautiful and becomes desirable. This is the reason why the Lord forbid Moses and the Israelites from using leaven in their sacrifice and possessing any leaven in their houses during holy festivals. Leaven defiles the purity present in the sacrifice and it is comparable to vanity in life. We can eat bread without leaven; it tastes good without leaven and continuous use of leaven in cooking is detrimental to human health. The devil will always put obstacles in our path to demoralise us and lead us to failure. He wants to lead us to failure, so that we may opt for the path of sin and use his trick of manipulation, lies, treachery, and looting. He puts the desire for vanity and greed in a person’s heart and then teaches a desperate person to sin to achieve those goals that lead to vanity.

Many times the devil will even tempt a person with lack of faith and anxiety. Many people suffer anxiety because they want to feel secure that their investment will bring a positive result and appreciate in value. An investment may be of any type; investment of effort into work or a project, monetary investment, investment of time and other forms of perspective efforts. In such a scenario, the anxious person of little faith will want to know and be certain of the final outcome as the investment is being made. But how is a person to know the future unless they have the intelligence to calculate the various differential possibilities and understand the most probable outcome? Nowadays, science provides such calculations through Quantum theory. But not all people can make such calculations; the devil knows this and he uses the person’s anxiety, lack of faith and lack of intelligence to lead them to seek answers with the Occult and tempts the person into grave sinfulness. Be strong, don’t fall for petty inconsistencies that get adjusted with time and timely effort. Show some faith!

In all our struggles we must remember and emulate that faith and perseverance with which people have achieved great success. We must continue our work and continue to believe in the awesomeness of God who makes all things possible and who aspires to build us in a way that we bring positivity to our lives and the world. Yes, the Lord does want us to forfeit vanity and sin, but he also wants us to overcome all obstacles and temptations to help the world survive the devil’s attacks. In doing so, we will be known as defenders of the weak, holy revolutionaries and peacemakers. Then we will find ourselves earning Salvation as we continue living and moving towards Eternal Life.

- By Bro Maryo