God’s blessings go out lavishly to those who don’t seem to deserve them.
There comes a point in life when our major spiritual struggle is no longer with the fact that we are weak and desperately in need of God’s forgiveness, but rather with the opposite, with the fact that God’s grace and forgiveness is overly-lavish, unmerited, and especially that it goes out so indiscriminately.
God’s lavish love and forgiveness apply equally to those who have worked hard and to those who haven’t, to those who have been faithful for a long time and to those who jumped on-board at the last minute, to those who have had to bear the heat of the day and to those who didn’t, to those who did their duty and to those who lived selfishly.
God’s love isn’t a reward for being good, doing our duty, resisting temptation, bearing the heat of the day in fidelity, saying our prayers, remaining pure, or offering worship, good and important though these are. God loves us because God is love and God cannot fail to love and cannot be discriminating in love. God’s love, as scripture says, shines on the good and bad alike.
That’s nice to know when we need forgiveness and unmerited love, but it’s hard to accept when forgiveness and love are given to those whom we deem less worthy of it, to those who didn’t seem to do their duty. It’s not easy to accept the fact that God’s love does not discriminate, especially when God’s blessings go out lavishly to those who don’t seem to deserve them.
I have been a priest for over 46 years, and if someone asked me “If you had your priesthood to do over again, would you do anything differently?” My answer would be “Yes.” “I’d would encourage my superiors to be easier on people. We need to risk the mercy and forgiveness of God more.”
As I get older I’m finding it harder and harder to accept the ways of God. Now that I’m old I’m struggling with all kinds of bitterness and doubt. That’s natural, I guess. But what upsets me is that I look around me and I see all kinds of people, young people and others, who’ve never been faithful, who’ve lived selfish lives, and they’re full of faith and are speaking in tongues! I’ve been faithful and I’m full of anger and doubt. Tell me, is that fair?”
In the end, we need to forgive God and that might be the hardest forgiveness of all. It’s hard to accept that God loves everyone equally—even our enemies, even those who hate us, even those who don’t work as hard as we do, even those who reject duty for selfishness, and even those who give in to all the temptations we resist. Although deep down we know that God has been more than fair with us, God’s lavish generosity to others is something which we find hard to accept.
Like the workers in the Parable of the Vineyard who toiled the whole day and then saw those who had worked just one hour get the same wage as theirs, we often let God’s generosity to others warp both our joy and our eyesight.
Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine Friends that we are grateful that God’s grace is amazing. Our struggle with God’s mercy points us in the right direction. May we again pray: Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner and merciful to all my neighbors too and really mean it!
