Ask For The Right Things To Be Heard

From today’s reading…

Today John gives us great comfort in knowing that our good, proper, correct prayers are heard but he concludes with 

God doesn’t mind you having a big house, a Rolls Royce, a private jet, or an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Tourbillon Chronograph Openworked watch. (They’re just $288,000, give or take a few thousand.)

God doesn’t mind you enjoying the NFL or Broadway plays or admiring the stars of “Shark Tank.”

But don’t idolize any of those things or people.

Don’t pray to be like them or have those things for the mere fact of owning them or being admired by strangers.

I’ve read somewhere that in the Gospels Jesus discusses success and abundance 27 times. (I’m 98.2% sure of that number but they say that 72.3% of statistics are made up on the spot.)

Regardless the exact number, there’s the story of the talents, the workers in the vineyard, putting a lamp under a bushel basket, and the barren fig tree.

We are supposed to be fruitful and productive and multiply our efforts.

But we can misuse those fruits and gather them for the wrong reasons, thus the parable of the rich man entering heaven compared to a camel passing through the eye of a needle and Lazarus and the rich man.

Worshipping, religion, and liturgy is in our DNA.

Some do it on Saturdays in the fall as they gather around a keg of beer and a BBQ grill under an EZ-Up® dressed in the proper attire while singing the proper songs and repeating the same chants in unison at the proper times while others do it on Sunday mornings at their church year-round.

To tell yourself you are too smart to fall for the “tricks and trappings” of “organized religion” is a fool’s tale.

As a member of the human race you’re a social creature and as a social creature you are part of many groups, either knowingly or unwittingly, and as a member of those groups you seek, wish, ask, pray, and/or strive for what those groups agree is valuable and worthy.

Choosing and becoming active in the right groups and seeking what is good is the only way to…

Stay the course. Keep the faith. Endure.

Now go sell something.