I have just started a part time temporary job. The employment will only last until May or sooner. We only have one car and my wife, Anna, needed the car last week. On her way to pick me up from work she drove by Holy Family Cathedral in Tulsa. In front of the church were buses taking school children to the Pro-life March in Washington DC last week. We both remarked at how inspiring the sight of youth with all their youthful exuberance working for truth and justice.
We have so many influences in the secular world for both good and bad.
Some of my friends and relatives love daytime soap operas. They are fanciful stories with outlandish plots and story lines. If I visit that relative I can always pick up on the plot of the particular soap because it never changes. They only change character roll playing.
Sometimes stories mirror real life. In our first reading shows the complicated web of sin in our lives that could happen.
The only person who was not sinning in this story is Uriah the Hittite. I always thought he had one of the coolest name in the Bible. He was a soldier and like all soldiers today, they have two families. The ones he leaves at home and the bonds he makes with his fellow soldiers. Both relationships are good and noble. He was the victim of murder. David even ate and drank with him before Uriah went back to the battlefield. Cold.
What were the soap opera senerios that could have happened.
David could have stayed in battle. He was their leader and Israel was at war. If he stayed with his men and fellow soldiers nothing would have happened. As the old saying goes, ” an idle mind is the devil’s workshop.”Their are more consequences.
Bathsheba could have aborted her child. Probably both mother and child would have died. However, she could have survived but Solomon would , most certainly, not.
What if King Solomon had never been born? Wow! More consequences.
Uriah could have had R&R and went home. Problem solved but not the sin. Uriah had fellow officers perish with him. More tangled webs and more consequences.
Opportunities for sin are all around us. The soap operas of life have more tangled webs. However, there is one thing that struck me by the Psalm, today, and gives me hope. It said, Be merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned.
Our God is a God of mercy. In all the soap opera scenarios God’s mercy is not obvious. The seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how. Of its own accord the land yields fruit. Just like the mustard seed God’s mercy spreads out long branches to us.
It does not matter what goes on in your life, God’s mercy is stronger. The children on the March for Life know. Keep those thoughts with you . Especially the hope for the future and God’s mercy for you.
Praise God
God Bless You always
Bob Burford
