Saturday August 5, 2023

For you this week:

• Reflection for Saturday: How safe do you feel today?
• Inside the Ministry: Prayer request for the GNM team
• This week’s WordBytes faith-builder: God, why have you abandoned me?
• This week’s video: The Victorious Life

This week’s Trivia Challenge: Why was John the Baptist imprisoned by King Herod? (Check your answer at the end of this newsletter.)

Saturday August 5, 2023

Leviticus 25:1, 8-17
Psalm 67:2-3, 5, 7-8
Matthew 14: 1-12
bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/080523.cfm
Podcast:
bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/daily-mass-reading-podcast-august-5-2023

Saints Calendar:
gnm.org/saints-find/saints-calendar

This fiftieth year you shall make sacred by proclaiming liberty in the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you. (From Saturday’s first reading)

Reflection for Saturday:
How safe do you feel today?

John the Baptizer preached, “Make straight the way of the Lord” (see John 1:23). To anyone living in Israel at the time, this was a message of safety. Today, we tend to see it only as a call to take no detours on our journey of faith.

In John’s time, as it was for Isaiah whom he quoted (“make straight in the desert a highway for our God” from Isaiah 40:3), the roads or highways were paths that had been forged by previous generations. They were not straight because travelers had to wend their way around hills and dunes. However, danger lurked behind every mound because they might be hiding a thief or an enemy ready to pounce. So, travelers made wide sweeps through potentially dangerous areas, always keeping in view the far side of the hills, allowing themselves room for evasive action.

They took the safest route. Not the shortest route. Heading straight through the area could have been disastrous. So, when Isaiah and John declared that people should make a straight way to the Lord, they were declaring that the Lord was safe.

The path to Heaven is the journey of becoming a little child who sleeps without fear in the Father’s arms. How safe do you feel with God the Father? Are you able to climb up onto his lap and into his arms to feel his protective concern for you? He wants you to feel his powerful arms wrapping around you and creating a zone of extreme peace with you at the center.

No one is loved fully in any human relationship. This is a normal flaw of the human condition. And it’s the source of much of our anguish. Because we project onto God what we’ve learned from humans, it’s difficult (though not impossible) to fully believe that God loves us completely in every possible way despite our own flaws. It’s especially difficult if we hold within us any misconceptions about how safe God is.

To feel closer to the Father’s heart of parental love for you, it’s very healing to see Jesus as not only a Mediator but as your pathway to the Father.

Jesus wants to help you go straight to the Father’s parental heart so you will know how very dear you are to him. Jesus knows that this will fill in the gaps of your human parents’ imperfect, insufficient love. He wants you to be able to climb up onto the Father’s lap and feel the safety and security of his concern for you. He wants you to feel his powerful arms wrapping around you and creating a zone of extreme peace with you at the center.

The above is an excerpt from Day 5 in my book The Father’s Heart. Get your copy of the book now from tothefathersheart.com.

Inside the Ministry:
Prayer request for the GNM team

The mid-year fundraiser ended far short of the goal. The team is praising the Lord for every supporter and every dollar donated: Graciela (full-time Assistant Director and Spanish Ministry) and her husband Fernando (part-time Spanish Media Assistant), Kathy (part-time Office Assistant), and Lily (part-time Social Media Manager).

Please pray that I won’t have to reduce their hours. They make a huge difference. I’ve already reduced my own pay. I will not reduce theirs without first doing it myself. (By the way: my husband and co-founder Ralph does IT work for GNM for only a token $100/month.)

But God is faithful! In praying for the GNM team, please thank the Lord — in advance — for keeping Good News Ministries safely forging ahead. Our thanksgiving is a step in faith. Our thanksgiving is a hammer-blow to the devil who wants Good News Ministries to stop. Our united thanksgiving will honor God for upcoming miracles.

If you want to make a donation now, please visit gnm.org/donate.

This week’s recommended faith-builder:
God, why have you abandoned me?

I shivered in the February wind as I followed my husband and two young children to the car. Glancing at the “For Sale” sign in our frozen yard, I remembered how soft with summer grass the ground had been when we placed that sign. We had prayed confidently back then for our house to sell quickly. Why was God ignoring us? I couldn’t shake the sense that he had abandoned us.

Find out what happened in this true story from my life; visit wordbytes.org/suffering/god-why-have-you-abandoned-me.

WordBytes is a library of Catholic faith-building articles by Good News Ministries. Come on in and explore! Visit WordBytes.org today.

This week’s recommended video:
The Victorious Life (new podcast)

In this excerpt from the podcast show “Catholicism for the Modern World”, Michael Snellen (the host) and I discuss how to live the victorious life when today’s world makes it so difficult. We need to be bold in our faith, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes it possible.

We also talk about building a close personal relationship with all three Persons of the Holy Trinity: God the Father, Jesus in the Eucharist, and the Holy Spirit.

I tell the story of how my Guardian Angel helps me know what the Holy Spirit is saying.

Watch the video @ gnm-media.org/the-victorious-life.

Sign up for early access to podcasts. You can be notified as soon as new ones are published!

Answer to this week’s Trivia Challenge:
Why was John the Baptist imprisoned by King Herod? Because Herod was having an affair with Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip, and John had spoken up against it. (See this Saturday’s Gospel reading.)

God bless you!

Every morning, I lift up in prayer everyone who helps Good News Ministries in any way (donors, volunteers, prayer supporters, etc.) and all the prayer requests posted on our site. What can I cover in prayer for you? Post your prayer request.

How else can the team and I serve you today? Visit our homepage.

Thank you for reading this newsletter.

Your servant in Christ,
Terry Modica, Executive Director
Good News Ministries
gnm.org

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