Wednesday, 29th January – Wednesday of week 3 of the year

Reflection: Mark 4: 1-20

TAKE HEED

After the death of the great man of God, Moses, when the mantle of leadership was to fall on Joshua, God promised to abide with Him in his new assignment. However, to have good success, God counseled him to hold on tenaciously to His word (Joshua 1: 1-8). Our Lord Jesus Christ came saying: “The words that I speak to you, they are spirit and they are life” (John 6: 63). This affirms the enduring truth that our Christian faith revolves around the word of God (Hebrews 11:6; Romans 10:17). The devil knows this, hence the intensity and myriads of ways he daily employs to make us lose out on this.

The gospel of today presents us with four categories of people in the parable of the sower. The same viable seeds produced four different results due to the differences in the nature and receptivity of the respective soils. How receptive is your heart and mine when we encounter God in His word? Acts like tweeting, facebooking, pinging and other forms of distractions during Mass are concrete examples of the tricks of the devil aimed at robbing us of God’s blessings.

Today, the Lord is admonishing you and I to eliminate all forms of distraction when we approach Him in His word, to hold on tenaciously to His word in the face of life’s challenges and merriment and to safeguard it against being drowned by our rush after material gains of this life (1John 2: 15-17).

We must each day, make conscious effort to deepen our knowledge and understanding of the word of God and act on it in other to experience the overall kind of success promised Joshua.

PRAYER: Oh Lord! Help me to resist and overcome all the antics of satan that daily seek to cloud my vision and understanding of your word. Amen.

KNOW YOUR FAITH: YOUCAT 20 – How can we respond to God when he speaks to us?

To respond to God means to believe him. [142-149]

Anyone who wants to believe needs a heart that is ready to listen (see 1 Kings 3:9). In many ways God seeks contact with us. In every human encounter, in every moving experience of nature, in every apparent coincidence, in every challenge, every suffering, there is a hidden message from God to us. He speaks even more clearly to us when he turns to us in his Word or in the voice of our conscience. He addresses us as friends. Therefore we, too, should respond as friends and believe him, trust him completely, learn to understand him better and better, and accept his will without reservation.

HIDE A TREASURE:”Take heed then how you hear; for to him who has will be given, and from him who has not, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away” Luke 8:18 RSV-CE

Readings for today: 2 Samuel 7: 14-17; Psalm 89: 4-30; Mark 4:1-20