WHY LORD?

No one on this earth lives without this question 'Why?' especially in terms of difficult moments of life. Why for me? Why this problem? Why my prayers are not heard? and so on... for all this whys there is an answer.

In the book of revelation we read "You are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold so I will spit you out of my mouth." (Revelation 3:16). What connection does this word of God has to do with the questions why? yes it has a lot to do with all our whys.

When we say Hot Vs Cold we can mean Good Vs Bad. We are neither good not bad. If we are good, righteous, faithful in the sight of God we can enjoy the Grace of God in our Goodness. If we are bad, sinful, full of malice at least we can have the Mercy of God. But we are neither good nor bad. We pretend to be good but in our actuality we are bad which God tells us as 'Lukewarmness'. Since we show that we are good, we are not able to have (enjoy) the Mercy of God. Since in actual life we are not good we are not able to enjoy the Grace and blessings of the Lord.

I hope we now have the answer for all our whys.

God could not help Adam because he pretended that he was good and Eve was bad (indirectly blaming God that His creation was not good) and was hiding from God, as we hide ourselves in the blanket of good image, covering himself with leaves, as we do. When the leaves, as they are not everlasting, dries up; he is again frustrated, angry, etc. In a similar way when the leaves of our the so called image of goodness is revealed like the drying of the leaves we also encounter same feeling as that of Adam.

When Adam came out from his hiding place in utter nakedness before God he received the love and mercy of God, the book of Genesis says, "Yahweh God made garments of skin for the man and his wife, and with these he clothed them." (Genesis 3:21). To cloth man with skin God the Father has to kill some animal, the first animal sacrifice ever made in the history of the Bible. This prefigures in later days that God has to kill (sacrifice) his son to cloth man in his divine glory.

So, when we stop pretend, justifying ourselves and come before God in our inner nakedness accepting our own selves with all the sinfulness and negative feelings, God will cloth us with his love and mercy.

As the theme for the Year of the Priests says, "Faithfulness of Christ, Faithfulness of Priests"; the faithfulness of Christ depends on our own faithfulness.

In His Merciful Love

Paul