FILL us with Your kindness, O Lord, prosper the work of our hands (Psalm 90:12-13, 14-15, 16-17). God demands so very much but gives us so much more (Mark 10:17-30).
Have pity on Your servants!
The psalm presents petitions to God from a community in great distress. It asks that the people be given wisdom. Only God can provide the wisdom that lets anyone to make sense of human existence, short as it is and characterized by suffering and problems. “Counting well one’s days” means however short the number of those days and years may be, if marked by a blameless life, they spell a wise heart. The psalmist pleads with God to turn back to His people, and have compassion on His servants. How much longer must they suffer chastisement? In God-given wisdom, may the people reform their ways, then relief would surely come.
Daybreak with its receding darkness naturally brings thoughts of hope and speaks of promise and well-being. May the Lord fill His people with kindness and gladness as in a new dawn that begins a new life for them. From now on may all their days be filled with joy in
exchange for the many days they have been afflicted by the Lord and for the many years they have suffered for their offenses. May this reversal of the people’s fortune reveal God in His glory to His servants and their children how He is faithful and merciful. Their deliverance will be seen as proof of God’s graciousness to them, blessing their work and bringing prosperity to them.
Sell what you have and give to the poor
The rich man who asks Jesus what he needs to do to inherit eternal life clearly believes that He can do something to deserve eternal life. Jesus first clarifies that He does not want the appellation “good” in the man’s salutation to Him. God alone is good, meaning the man must focus on the unique goodness of God, a graciousness unrivaled. The man himself is good and upright, and Jesus loves him for it, when the man admits in all honesty that he has from youth done all the commandments enumerated by Jesus as defining a particular way of life required of anyone desiring eternal life.
But the man still lacks something. His consciousness is that of action and reward, of doing good in order to get the best. What Jesus next proposes to the man takes him to another level; from his achievements with the commandments, the rich man needs to concentrate in having “treasures in heaven”. It is how to value above all one’s relationship with God who alone is that good. To get to the path of this God-centeredness means following Jesus. And this spells concretely the necessity of being detached from all other treasures here on earth. This is achieved by relinquishing all possessions and giving them to the poor.
It is impossible, but not for God
Eternal life is a gift of God. To receive it, one needs first to be free and totally available for it, liberated from any other dominating masters. But the man could not renounce his many possessions; he sadly went away from Jesus whom he eagerly ran after only moments earlier. Even a righteous man like the rich man can find it very difficult to respond to the full and radical demands of becoming a follower of Jesus. Wealth is not bad; it can actually indicate divine favor and a reward for true piety. But it can be a distraction or a diversion from the real purpose and goal of life. That is why one must decisively downgrade wealth’s role in life.
Jesus escalates the issue for His disciples by pointing to the impossibility of the wealthy entering the kingdom of God. The image of a double-jointed camel passing through the eye of a needle more easily than for a rich man to enter God’s kingdom drove the astonished disciples to comment almost despairingly that nobody, therefore, can be saved. What is impossible for human beings is possible for God. Man’s good deeds cannot replace God’s grace. Only divine love and grace can enable man to enter the kingdom of God.
Alálaong bagá, the center has to shift from the human to the divine. The choice has to be made. For which we need wisdom: The realization that only with God’s love filling us, can we sing for joy forever! For riches or power or even health, however good they are, cannot give us the security and happiness we long for. And there is a price to pay, a heavy cost the rich man found too much. But for His disciples’ commitment to follow Him giving up the security of family and property (and to face persecutions!), Jesus guarantees them a hundredfold return in their new family and identity in and with Him now and eternal life later. God comes across with incomprehensible generosity!
Join me in meditating on the Word of God every Sunday, 5 to 6 a.m. on DWIZ 882, or by audio-streaming on www.dwiz882.com.