Wednesday of Week 9 in Ordinary Time (Year I)
Tobit 3:1-11,16-17 | Psalm 24(25):2-9 | Mark 12:18-27
‘so now, do with me as you will’ (Tobit 3:6)
How often do we let God have His way in our lives?
When we run up against obstacles on our journey, how often do we surrender ourselves to Him and ask Him for His guidance?
Tobit and Sarah show us two different yet distressingly familiar perspectives in dealing with unbearable circumstances. Both ask God to take their lives, weary of their affliction.
The younger Sarah, though, first contemplates going her own way, and taking her own life. Too many youths today also think of it as a quick and easy way to end their pain. She pulls back from the brink after realizing how her death would only prolong the suffering of her loved ones; I hope and pray that more of her modern contemporaries will do the same.
Tobit, long in years, leaves it in the hands of God, recognizing that his life is His to dispose of as He wills it. Jesus later teaches his disciples, and us through scripture, to believe the same:
Our Father in heaven, may your name be held holy,
your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven (Matthew 6:9-10)
and He practised what He preached, during His darkest hour at Gethsemane:
And going on a little further he fell on his face and prayed. ‘My Father,’ he said ‘if it is possible, let this cup pass me by. Nevertheless, let it be as you, not I, would have it.’ (Matthew 26:39)
In these troubled times, it’s even more important to surrender to the will of God, that He may show us the road of salvation that He’s already mapped out for us. As today’s psalm reminds us:
Good and upright is the Lord
He shows us the way
He guides the meek to justice,
He teaches the humble to follow His ways
To You, O Lord, I lift up
I lift up my soul, my God
Amen.