Searching for Beauty and Grace

SEARCHING FOR BEAUTY AND GRACE
​5th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year B

While being interviewed on the NPR program “On Being,” Mary Catherine Bateson, talked about  “believing in the God of all things as they are.” She said, “Job lost a sense of wonder.” She continued … God invites us to just look around to experience the wonder of creation which then leads to praise.

This is something Job, in the first reading today, failed to do. He was so caught up in his own ambitions,  possessions, and worries he failed to notice all the goodness around him.

Job's shaky encounter with God turned into a loving one once he figured out what he thought was his really did not belong to him even though he worked hard to get them. The never ending beauty of creation and all it encompasses is entrusted to us to protect and share for as long as we live on this fragile planet.

The woman in the gospel, Penthera, Peter’s mother-in-law, was hanging on for dear life. Whatever she may have yearned for or acquired in life no longer mattered. When she was healed by Jesus her experience of in exhaustible goodness transformed her. She then became Jesus’s disciple.

Do we expect God to relate to us the way we want God to treat us? Do we ask too much of the world we live in … sometimes only for our own benefit? Maybe a quiet patience beckons us to let beauty and grace come to us rather than chasing after them with our prayers and good deeds. What will it take for me to be open to whatever a holy Spirit will bring into my life? Then, will I share that blessing with others?