GOD WORKS ON US ALSO IN OUR DARK TIMES

GOD WORKS ON US ALSO IN OUR DARK TIMES

(Friday, May 19)

When the Lord finishes speaking with the Samaritan Woman, His disciples come back with some food and urge Him to eat. But He says to them, “I have food to eat of which you do not know… My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.” (Jn 4:32,34) Christ’s “food” in this moment has been the “harvest-ing” or gathering of “fruit for eternal life,” which was the conversion of the Samaritan Woman. The disciples “do not know” about this “food,” because they discount the Samaritans as heretics and outsiders, and as such not worth talking to. The Samaritans, to the minds of the disciples, could not be capable or ready to hear the truth, because they are “others,” and have been taught wrongly by “others.” But the Lord calls the disciples to “lift up their eyes and look” beyond their own, because the Church “reaps” also where “others” have labored for the Sower: “Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest! And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. For in this the saying is true: ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored, and you have entered into their labors.”

Today I am thinking about the “others” in our own lives, who contribute to our spiritual growth when we are “outsiders” to true faith in Christ. We ourselves also “labor,” perhaps in the *wrong* ways, when we are looking for fulfilment in the wrong places. As perhaps was the Samaritan Woman, when she was entering into relationships with one man after the other. We may have entirely been swallowed up by some addiction, in our quest for fulfilment or for something “more.” But just as with Jonah, when he was swallowed up by the fish, God is not absent when we are trapped in the belly of some addiction or other darkness. God hears our pleas, however weak or *wrong* they may be, and He does not discount us, as if we are not worth talking to. “Lord, I have cried unto You, hear me!” let us say today, and thank You for always being there, amidst our ups and downs.