THURSDAY, THIRD WEEK OF LENT
Jer 7: 23-28; Ps 95: 1-2, 6-9; Lk 11: 14-23
LISTEN TO HIS VOICE
“One thing I did command them: Listen to my voice and I will be your God and you will be my people” (Jer 7: 23). The God of Israel desired that the Israelites should give heed to His voice. But the people were stiff-necked and they did not listen to the voice of the Lord their God. They did not train themselves to obey the will of God so when Jesus ‘the Word of God’ was in their midst they found it difficult to understand him.
We all like to be our own masters. The world tells us that we are free. We can do whatever we wish and be whatever we want to be. Yet, most of us, willingly or unwillingly submit ourselves to some kind of authority. It could be at home or at work. Every county and nation has rules that we need to abide by. Even in a game or in sports, we need to follow certain rules; we cannot pick and choose the laws we want to follow. Like it or not, we are not our own masters; we are created beings. We chose nothing or it is very limited. We did not choose our nationality, our parents, our skin colour, our siblings etc. In the same way, He who created us is our master and knows best His creation. However, He is not a master as the world perceives. Our Master is the One who became a slave to deliver us from slavery.
To listen to our Master, we need to be educated to listen to the voice of God. And then when we hear the word of God, it seems impossible to obey it. The God who loves us tries to guide us every day of our life through his voice through different sources; the people we encounter, the word of God we read, the good example of the life of saints and so on. But if we are not trained to listen then we will end up fighting against ‘the Word of God’ like those people in the gospel of today. So let us not harden our hearts towards the voice of God. Let us try to listen to Him who is eagerly waiting to speak to us.
Response: O that today you would listen to his voice!
Harden not your hearts.
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