Playing God
Thursday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time
My dear encountered couples:
Trying to do away with all that bothers us is a great waste of time. The more we try to arrange the world to suit ourselves, the pickier and unhappier we get.
King Herod had been greatly bothered by the teaching of John the Baptist. Actually, I think his wife was more bothered than he was. She didn’t like someone telling her the truth about herself and her immorality. So, to get her off his back, Herod had John beheaded. But now comes along another one, Jesus, with all sorts of disturbing teachings and making life once again uncomfortable for Herod. Would life never be free from disturbances?.
The answer, of course, is — NO! Especially for those who don’t want to live according to the built-in rules of nature. Those who want to do things that are not good for themselves, who want to run everyone else’s life so they won’t have interference from them, who seek mainly their own comfort and convenience — all these have a great job on their hands in getting the whole world in order. They will never be at peace and be able to relax. They will spend their entire lives trying to reconstruct the world and human nature. They’ll probably continue even after death to try to reconstruct heaven and hell. Happiness will always elude them.
What Herod needed was to change himself by changing his desires and his way of life. He would have been much better off and would have experienced some peace. I hope that none of us are making the same mistake he made. Let us work at changing ourselves, not everyone else.
Seek God and his wil1 in all you do, and though you never find the happiness that satisfies you in this world, you most certainly will have all you can handle in the next. Live the faith. It will pay off.
