4th Sunday of Advent 23.12.12 Salvation
St John the Baptist tells us to prepare the way for the Saviour; to make the road straight and clear.
There is a refreshing simplicity about this. God wants to save us; we want to be saved. So why not just get on with it and make everything as direct as possible?
Yet we find in practice that it is not so simple; that far from clearing the way to salvation we are tempted to put extra barriers in the way – false gods, sinful behaviour, neglect of prayer and sacraments, generally living too much for this life and forgetting the next.
If we agree with God and go with what He wants we have salvation with all its attendant blessings – healing, peace, joy, unity...
If we put barriers between ourselves and God; if we think up reasons for why we should not have to do what He wants then we deny ourselves all the above blessings and we get a lot of misery and trouble instead.
How simple it sounds just to agree with God and go with Him, yet how hard we make it.
We need His grace to help us overcome our pride and self-will, to enable us to give the simple assent to whatever He puts before us.
We struggle with our own sinfulness and we try to break free. That is one level of the problem.
But we find there is another level as well. Even if we did obey God on every point and lived perfect lives we still would not immediately see a better world.
This is because there are millions of people defying the will of God every day; and the cumulative effect of this is that the world does not run as it should (not even close).
And we are caught up in that world. So we suffer from the fallout of other people’s sins even if we did not commit any sins ourselves.
We are then tempted to throw it all in and join the others. Why should I be keeping the rules and living on the straight and narrow when others are out doing what they like?
This is when we are really tested as to how much we love God. It still remains true that blessings will come to us if we obey Him, but we have to go on stand-by; we have to wait a while to see those promised blessings.
Until we can remove the blockage. Until that happens we will have to suffer some of the fallout.
Many Christians wonder why they have to suffer so much when they are living good lives (or at least as good as most people get).
It is not that God has abandoned us; nor that He is punishing us. He is asking us to do as He did when on earth – to carry the Cross; to be willing to endure the fallout of other people’s sins while still trusting in God to bring His plans to completion.
Or to put it another way: He asks us to be willing to obey Him at all times no matter what the consequences may be. Trust, obey, do not hold back; do not doubt or fear; just go with the momentum and let God’s will be done.
If enough people did that we would see major change in the world. In any case each of us must do it, even if no one else does.
This much is for our own salvation and sanity. We just hope the rest of the world comes along too. But to let it be done according to His word is always the best policy anyway.
That is our prayer, as it needs to be our attitude.
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