12 January 2017
Thursday of the First Week in Ordinary Time
“Encourage yourselves daily,” says Hebrews 3:13. If you are reading this blog today, perhaps you are trying to do just that. The living of the Christian life is something that requires daily encouragement. Children get it from parents who teach them how to pray and how to behave in a Christian fashion. Parents need to find that encouragement, too.
The rest of this verse reads: “Encourage yourselves daily while it is still ‘today,’ so that none of you may grow hardened by the deceit of sin.” Sin is deceptive because it makes a bad act look good. Sin tends to creep up and creep into our lives. We have to fight back against it, and in doing so, we often fight back against our own natural tendencies. It is because of this struggle that we need encouragement, as Hebrews 3:13 rightly states.
The opposite path, the path of sin, needs no encouragement. It is easy to get trapped in sinful and unhealthy routines. The heart becomes hard in those situations, refusing to open itself up to something greater. A hardened heart loves person X, and pet Y, and activity Z, but is closed to outsiders.
The heart that loves God, on the other hand, loves not only God, but every creature made by God, and every creature redeemed by God. Such a heart is always thirsting for more (Magis!), because God is infinite. Take courage, then, thirsty hearts! Whoever drinks the water that Christ gives: that water “becomes in him a spring of water, welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14).