Too often we complain about the hardships we face at work and at home. About the stubbornness and laziness of everyone else. Even about the many tasks we have to get done if we are serving in Church and the challenges we face in getting help to accomplish them. How much of all these bring glory to God? How much of it brings the love and joy of the Gospel to the folks around us? How does the light of Christ shine through us in all of it?
If we truly love our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, we know that His abounding love for us never ends;and so there will be no obstacles or challenges too great to overcome. No pain or suffering too heavy for us to bear for His glory. How many sanely folks will boast about their afflictions, the pain and sufferings they endured for a God that others cannot grasp or comprehend let alone see with their own eyes? Yet the sanely wants have been the Saints that have gone before us. They bore their crosses and followed Jesus to the very end. Their treasure is to be found in the Kingdom of God and they have received their Heavenly inheritance.
My treasure is to be found in You Lord Jesus and so I offer you my heart, mind and soul. Amen
First reading
2 Corinthians 11:18,21-30
If I am to boast, let me boast of my own feebleness
So many others have been boasting of their worldly achievements, that I will boast myself. But if anyone wants some brazen speaking – I am still talking as a fool – then I can be as brazen as any of them, and about the same things. Hebrews, are they? So am I. Israelites? So am I. Descendants of Abraham? So am I. The servants of Christ? I must be mad to say this, but so am I, and more than they: more, because I have worked harder, I have been sent to prison more often, and whipped many times more, often almost to death. Five times I had the thirty-nine lashes from the Jews; three times I have been beaten with sticks; once I was stoned; three times I have been shipwrecked and once adrift in the open sea for a night and a day. Constantly travelling, I have been in danger from rivers and in danger from brigands, in danger from my own people and in danger from pagans; in danger in the towns, in danger in the open country, danger at sea and danger from so-called brothers. I have worked and laboured, often without sleep; I have been hungry and thirsty and often starving; I have been in the cold without clothes. And, to leave out much more, there is my daily preoccupation: my anxiety for all the churches. When any man has had scruples, I have had scruples with him; when any man is made to fall, I am tortured.
If I am to boast, then let me boast of my own feebleness.
Gospel
Matthew 6:19-23
Store up treasure for yourselves in heaven
Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Do not store up treasures for yourselves on earth, where moths and woodworms destroy them and thieves can break in and steal. But store up treasures for yourselves in heaven, where neither moth nor woodworms destroy them and thieves cannot break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
‘The lamp of the body is the eye. It follows that if your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light. But if your eye is diseased, your whole body will be all darkness. If then, the light inside you is darkness, what darkness that will be!’
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