25 August 2019 - fitting in

Today's Readings

(Audio)

So strengthen your drooping hands and your weak knees. 
Make straight paths for your feet,
that what is lame may not be disjointed but healed.

The LORD is calling us to be strong. But he is not calling us to the sort of independent struggle or contest where we fight to secure our salvation. This exhortation is addressed to us as children. It is a reminder to not lose heart as the LORD trains us to bring forth the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

Strive to enter through the narrow gate,
for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter
but will not be strong enough.

The LORD is training us to enter the narrow gate. He wants all of his children from the north, the south, the east, and the west to come into his house. But the gate is narrow. We and our pride won't fit through together, nor any attachment to wealth or riches. Yet we don't often lay down all of these encumbrances at once. The LORD does not insist that we be perfected all at once. Instead, the LORD calls us to the persistence that endures until we enter. He himself wants us inside. He is helping us to lay down every weight of sin. Jesus himself is the gate for the sheep. We need to let him make us like him to pass through.

He will say to you in reply,
'I do not know where you are from.

If we presume too much we may find the door locked. Let us not rely on ourselves and our own strength. But let us persist as the discipline of the LORD strengthens us and draws us in. He calls us to be strong under his discipline. But it is clear that only people who know him will ultimately enter. They are the ones whom he himself has trained.

Let us join the joyful procession to Jerusalem, to the kingdom of the LORD, and to the house of the master.

They shall bring all your brothers and sisters from all the nations
as an offering to the LORD,
on horses and in chariots, in carts, upon mules and dromedaries,
to Jerusalem, my holy mountain, says the LORD,
just as the Israelites bring their offering
to the house of the LORD in clean vessels.

We tend to hear the gospel today and fixate on how narrow the gate is said to be. Yet we should hear rather the desire that all be saved and come to knowledge of the truth (see First Timothy 2:4).

And people will come from the east and the west
and from the north and the south
and will recline at table in the kingdom of God.

This should give us the courage to do what the psalmist suggests.

 Go out to all the world and tell the Good News.