Don’t Ever Lose Hope!

Thursday of the First Week in Ordinary Time

Heb 3: 7-14; Mark 1: 40-45

Dc. Larry Brockman

 

So, what does St. Paul and the Psalmist mean when they say “Harden not your Hearts”?

Well, sometimes we can be so steeped in our every-day problems that our hearts just are not any longer motivated by our Faith and Hope in the Lord.  It is then that our hearts are effectively hardened.

Such was the case with the Israelis in the desert.  They were parched, as was the land they were travelling through.  Water was at a premium.  And even though the Lord had rescued them from Pharaoh and the Egyptians and cared for them for 40 years they didn’t trust the Lord’s promise to care for them going forward.  They were wholly and totally focused on their immediate needs, and not on Faith and Hope in the Lord.  Their Faith was so weak that their hearts were numb, even hardened, to the big picture of the promised land that would come to those who trusted and followed the Lord’s commands.  And so Paul quotes this famous Psalm and warns the Christian community of the same trap- a trap in which one forsakes the living God.  When you fall into such a trap, you despair of hope, and abandon your Faith.

Does it ever happen to us?  Well, our Faith and hopes were passed to many of us when we were young.  We came to believe; we resolved to dedicate our lives to doing God’s will, and our hope was in a future in God’s Kingdom.  But then life happened.  And in the midst of the turmoil of life, we find ourselves, in a figurative sense, having spent 40 years in a desert wandering around in what seems like an aimless pursuit.  Sometimes we have a tendency to give up hope when the latest trial arrives our way, the straw that breaks the camel’s back so to speak.  It could be an illness, a financial problem, or a relationship problem.  But instead of trusting and hoping in the Lord, we look to our own devices, and forget about hope and faith.

The leper in Biblical times was a forsaken person.  He was shunned by society because it was an infectious and incurable disease.  It would be easy to despair in such a case, to abandon all hope, and lose Faith.  But the leper in the Gospel had Faith and Hope in Jesus.  And he was rewarded for it.

That is a lesson all of us need to remember.  No matter how bad things get, we must never lose hope and Faith in God.  Rather, when the going gets tough, open your hearts to the Lord.

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