Tuesday, March 8, 2016

“What you are is God's gift to you, what you become is your gift to God.” 

― Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer

DEUTERONOMY 5-7

4Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.^a 5Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

MARK 12:1-27 

13Later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words. 14They came to him and said, “Teacher, we know that you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay the imperial tax^b to Caesar or not? 15Should we pay or shouldn’t we?”

But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. “Why are you trying to trap me?” he asked. “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.”16They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”

“Caesar’s,” they replied.

17Then Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” And they were amazed at him. 

JOURNAL

I often am compelled to think too often in terms of what is right and wrong in this world.  Instead of starting with my own heart.  At it's core, I am not trusting God but desiring to force things into becoming what I want.  If I think back to Jesus and all the power he possessed.  He could have changed the world.  He could have called down angels, took power, righted all wrongs, eliminated illness and firmly and without question established his kingdom on earth.  Yet he didn't!  

If I go back to God's commandment of the Israelites...to love God with everything and all that I am.  It does not say to first make sure everyone else is obeying God and loving him.  The beauty of God's commands is that it always starts first with our own hearts...then it extends only to others out of a desire to see them accept God's love.

God's Gift to me is life, the opportunity to live another hour, another day. My gift to God is through obedience and love and being grateful and living today in gratitude and generosity.