"You need endurance ... (Heb. 10:36)

 

"You need endurance

    to do the will of God

  And recieve

    what He has promised."

                    - Hebrews 10:36


Endurance:

"the fact or power of enduring an unpleasant or difficult process without giving way. (Oxford Dictionary)"

The passage from Hebrew reminds me that having faith does not mean that "I believe, therefore, all goes well for me."   Faith gives us hope that resurrection follows suffering and death.  

The attitude I must have is: "I believe in the Resurrection, therefore, I have hope which gives me strength to endure my suffering and do the will of God even when it's difficult."

Everyone has sufferings and the temptation is always to find ways to move around them or find a way to pacify or numb them.  Hebrews reminds me today that I need to endure and move through, to be strong in hope.

I don't feel at this time that I have an inordinate amount of suffering but I have found myself disappointed recently that our culture frequently proposes, especially to our young people, that suffering and pain do not have meaning whatsoever and one needs to avoid at all cost.

Growth comes through grit: "You need endurance to do the will of God..."



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sacrament of the Present Moment (Key Excerpts)

Jean Pierre de Caussade  “Sacrament of the Present Moment”  (Key Excerpts) Just as it is fire and not the phi­los­o­phy or sci­ence of that ele­ment and its effects that heats, so it is God’s order and his will which sanc­ti­fy and not curi­ous spec­u­la­tions about its ori­gin or purpose. What he ordains for us each moment is what is most holy, best, and most divine for us.  The mys­te­ri­ous growth of Jesus Christ in our heart is the accom­plish­ment of God’s pur­pose, the fruit of his grace and divine will. This fruit, as has been point­ed out, forms, grows, and ripens in the suc­ces­sion of our duties to the present which are con­tin­u­al­ly being replen­ished by God, so that obey­ing them is always the best we can do. We must offer no resis­tance and blind­ly aban­don our­selves to his divine will in per­fect trust. It is the will of God that gives every­thing, what­ev­er it may be, the pow­er to form Jesus Christ in the cen­ter of our being Souls must look upon ever...
Read more

Recommitment Time?

  "You have lost the love                    you had at first.  Realize how far                    you have fallen. Repent and do the works                    you did at first."                              -Revelation 2:4-5 As we move to the end of the liturgical year, the Church has us ponder the last things and uses readings from the Book of Revelation. Today's first reading calls us to be shaken out of complacency and return to a greater sense of zeal and love.   Time sometimes wears us down gradually without us noticing.   You have lost the love you had at first  is a phrase that can shake us back to commitment in both work and relationship.   Are we still putting in the time and effort to do...
Read more

Winter

 Winter coming to a close harsh winds' bite  sinking less deeply into bone; pavement peaking  out from beneath  tattered blankets; Sun deciding to stay for dinner. Blood in cold veins starts to warm  and muck along like galoshes in slush; scissors in drawers ready to be opened to  cut sleeves off flannel. Perch and walleye look up at square shadowed clouds  moving across their icy sky leaving behind holes  of luminous light; orange trucks look forward to dropping front-end weight  and washing salt off their tail-ends telling war stories to the guys at the garage. Winter coming to a close the season that proves one is still tough enough to not fly away  like a snowbird.
Read more