Friday December 6, 2024

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Good News Reflections:
Making scripture meaningful to your daily life
by Terry Modica

Fear is not of God. It does not belong in a Christian’s life.

Good News Reflection for:

Friday of the 1st week of Advent
December 6, 2024

Today’s Prayer:

My Lord, teach me with your Holy Spirit how to be wise, obedient and fearless. Help me to accept Your timing in Your wonderful and silent work. Amen.

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Today’s Readings:

Isaiah 29:17-24
Ps 27:1, 4, 13-14
Matthew 9:27-31
bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/120624.cfm
USCCB Podcast of the Readings:
bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/daily-mass-reading-podcast-december-6-2024

Why are you afraid? Have faith!

In today’s responsorial Psalm we say: “The Lord is my light and my salvation – whom should I fear?”

What are you afraid of right now? What disappointment are you afraid is coming? What’s worrying you? What’s stealing your joy?

When we “gaze on the loveliness of the Lord,” our faith grows and we realize that there is no reason to be afraid. We realize: God is so wonderful, so caring, so good, so awesomely powerfully concerned about my every need, my every hope, my every prayer, of course there is nothing that will happen to me that is so bad as to produce more harm than good!

Fear is the opposite of faith. When we have fear, we’re blind to the wonderfulness of the Lord, and like the two men in the Gospel reading, we need to be healed.

Faith is the cure – faith that identifies Jesus as Lord, faith that appreciates the loveliness of the Lord, faith that believes that God is going to make good come from every hardship, no matter how bad it looks.

This faith is what empowers us to believe that we shall indeed “see the bounty of the Lord in the land of the living”, and it becomes the source of our hope.

This is a faith that is willing to “wait for the Lord with courage,” because we know that God is watching over us, and thus we can experience hope even during hardships.

Fear is not of God. It does not belong in a Christian’s life. Neither does worry, because worry is caused by fear. Whenever we become concerned about anything that might be worrisome, if the Lord truly is our Savior, as we claim him to be, then we choose to turn it over to him in trust, because we know we can trust him!

Those who are blinded by fear are those who cannot see the Lord in the situation that worries them, and thus they have valid reason to live in fear. However, you and I should know better. We have already seen the Lord do much good. We have valid reasons to live in confident hope, despite all the visible evidence to the contrary.

Are you living in this hope? How visible is it? Do you have more hope than fear, more peace than worry?

Most faith-filled Christians experience temporary blindness from time to time. That’s simply because we forget to gaze upon the loveliness of the Lord. In the darkness, we need to turn toward the light of Christ, but that’s not all. We need to stare at it until it blinds us to whatever we were worried about! The goodness of God must become our focus.

Fear sets in when we get distracted by the attractions of this world, losing sight of what is pure and holy and heavenly. Faith tells us to not be distracted by our trials and hardships. Instead of focusing on the evidence of impending disaster, we need to keep our eyes on Jesus, the reason for our hope.

Victorious hope comes from remembering to keep our eyes focused on Jesus at all times!

For more on the topic of this subject, use our WordByte, “How the witness of hope can change the world” @ wordbytes.org/spiritual-growth/hope-can-change-world

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