Don’t Look Back
(For Wednesday’s children’s mass.)
Why do bad things happen to good people? It is a question many people ask many times. Maybe you think you are a good person. Then why do bad things happen to you? God planned these readings today just for you to maybe help you understand the question and maybe find an answer.
In the first reading from Job, it is almost a poem we are reading. The person writing this poem is telling us just how great and awesome God is. God moves mountains, he shakes the earth, he commands the sun and stars. Who else can do this?
We pray to God asking for many things. We don’t always get what we ask for. And most of the time we get what we need. What we want and what we need are two different things. We are always to trust God that what He has planned for us is always what we need most.
One disciple today asks Jesus if he can follow him. Jesus says if he does, he must know that there is no place to rest and maybe no food. Would you want to follow Jesus if you knew that?
When Jesus lived on this earth, we must remember that they had to walk everywhere. The distance from Capernaum to Jerusalem is about the same distance from Rice Lake to Duluth. In Israel it is mostly desert. There are very few trees. It is mountainous which means you cannot walk in a straight line. Sometimes you must climb the mountain, other times you have walk the long way around the mountain. Even walking as fast as you could it might take two weeks to walk all the way.
There was no smooth highway. There were no Holiday Inns to stay overnight. You would either find friends along the way or you would sleep outside. They did not have tents. They did not carry extra clothes. There were no Kwik Trips to get something to eat. You would have to find food along the way, maybe some friends would give you food.
This is a very difficult life that Jesus asks us to live. No food, no bed, it sounds like there are a lot of bad things that happen to a lot of good people when they follow Jesus. But Jesus does make good things happen from the bad. He doesn’t want anyone to get hurt but he knows this world is not perfect. And we will all have bad things happen. But we also know that heaven is perfect. And that is where Jesus wants us to be, with Him in heaven.
So, we follow Jesus here on earth, through good and bad, knowing heaven is one day where we all shall be. That is why we don’t look back, we look forward to heaven.
May the Lord bless you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen