{"id":189,"date":"2011-10-06T19:41:56","date_gmt":"2011-10-07T00:41:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/?p=189"},"modified":"2011-10-27T19:44:10","modified_gmt":"2011-10-28T00:44:10","slug":"appearancdes-can-be-deceiving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/?p=189","title":{"rendered":"Appearances Can Be Deceiving"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Thursday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time<\/o:o:o:p><\/span><\/h2>\n

Mal 3: 13-20b; Lk 11: 5-13<\/o:o:o:p><\/span><\/h2>\n

Dc. Larry Brockman<\/o:o:o:p><\/h2>\n

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Appearances can be deceiving.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/o:o:o:p><\/font><\/p>\n

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Take, for example our first reading.\u00a0 <\/span>People who are Godless; lie and cheat; and even appear to be proud of their evil ways seem to be prospering in Malachi\u2019s time; whereas the God fearing, law abiding, prayerful disciples of the Lord, who are victimized by these evil doers,\u00a0 <\/span>just seem to suffer more and more because they are not following the ways of the world.\u00a0 <\/span>But all of this is just appearances.\u00a0 <\/span>Malachi goes on to give voice to God\u2019s intent.\u00a0 <\/span>He says those who trust in the Lord will be vindicated\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cOn the day the Lord takes action\u201d.\u00a0 <\/span>And the key here is trust- trust that the Lord will respond to our prayers and honest attempts to be righteous in His sight\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/o:o:o:p><\/font><\/p>\n

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The Gospel is telling us the same thing.\u00a0 <\/span>One can read the Gospel parable too literally, and miss the main point.\u00a0 <\/span>The parable of the persistent neighbor can be viewed as a lesson by comparison.\u00a0 <\/span>We can draw that conclusion by comparing the response of the home owner to persistent attempts by his neighbor versus a less persistent approach by the neighbor.\u00a0 <\/span>And certainly that message applies.\u00a0 <\/span>The home owner will respond better to the persistent neighbor by comparison.\u00a0 <\/span>The squeaky wheel gets the grease!\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/o:o:o:p><\/font><\/p>\n

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But the main message of the parable is one of contrast, not comparison- the contrast between a human person who hears an appeal and an all loving God who hears an appeal.\u00a0 <\/span>You see, we can relate to the role of the home owner.\u00a0 <\/span>We don\u2019t want to be bothered; we don\u2019t want our families disturbed during the middle of the night; and we are sleepy and want to go back to sleep.\u00a0 <\/span>But God is not sleepy, and He loves all of His children equally.\u00a0 <\/span>He hears our appeals and acts on them- persistence helps, but God really only has to hear our prayers once.\u00a0 <\/span>We can be certain of that if we believe in God.\u00a0 <\/span>So, there is a tremendous contrast between us, as humans, and God.\u00a0 <\/span>How silly it is for us to think of God hearing our appeals for help in the same way we view a neighbor hearing our appeal.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/o:o:o:p><\/font><\/p>\n

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So then, why doesn\u2019t God seem to respond to us when we ask Him for something?\u00a0 <\/span>Well, because appearances can be deceiving.\u00a0 <\/span>Let me turn Jesus\u2019 words around a bit.\u00a0 <\/span>Could it be that we are asking for a snake rather than a fish?\u00a0 <\/span>Ask yourselves this.\u00a0 <\/span>Have you ever asked for something from God, not received it, and then found out later that it was better that you did not get what you asked for.\u00a0 <\/span>Maybe you didn\u2019t get one job offer, but then the next one was even better.\u00a0 <\/span>Or has something happened that seemed like a disaster at the time; and then later you found out that it was actually a stroke of luck- like the passenger that missed an airplane, only to discover that the plane crashed.\u00a0 <\/span>These are easy to see, but God always sees the whole picture, even in the subtle little things we cannot ever hope to see.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/o:o:o:p><\/font><\/p>\n

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God loves all of us, but, yes, indeed, appearances can be deceiving.\u00a0 <\/span>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/o:o:o:p><\/font><\/p>\n

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Thursday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time Mal 3: 13-20b; Lk 11: 5-13 Dc. Larry Brockman \u00a0 Appearances can be deceiving.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 Take, for example our first reading.\u00a0 People who are Godless; lie and cheat; and even appear to be proud of their evil ways seem to be prospering in Malachi\u2019s time; whereas the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[72],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}