Identifying As Children of God

Dear Friends,

Children and shepherds are two sets of unassuming people from an ancient Scripture with valuable lessons for us in today’s readings.

God’s love, John tells us in today’s second reading, enables us to be not just children but children of God. What do you suppose that means? Does John want us to think as children do? To learn as children learn? Or does it mean that, like children, we need to be or become at home with the great mysteries of life as children are so easily at home?

On the surface, we don’t deal with mystery in our everyday life. We work, play, make homes for ourselves and others, share ideals. We pray, cook, shop, spend endless hours on social media, make a living, show others we love them. In our everyday lives, we don’t feel like the children of God. We feel – well, adult, put upon, restless, satisfied, harried and energetic, but we don’t feel like children of God and we don’t pay attention to mystery. Then something happens which catches us up short.

COVID, for example? Why now? We also wonder why do people abuse or kill each other? Why does this person love me with all my warts and foibles? Why is the world divided into the rich and poor? The 99% and the 1%? Why do people feel they have the right to be supreme over others? Why you? Why me?

As we see our world reflected in the news, in our personal lives, maybe we dare to ask, “Is this all God’s plan?” If so, is God playing favorites? Or is this the result of being human, being free to choose?

In these pandemic times, we are encouraged to seek scientific ways to help bring COVID-19 down. But does science answer questions of the heart and soul about the meaning of life and death? If not, where do we look?

It’s when we begin to face and probe questions that defy clear and easy questions that we begin to face mystery: The mystery of life and the mystery of God.

In the face of mystery, being child-like means we are wrapped in the confidence that all will be well, that God is in charge, but truth be known, we are not easily convinced. Mystery befuddles us.

If we reduce mystery to a problem to be solved or a puzzle to piece together, we have done mystery an injustice for treating it like any other human concern. The fact is that every day and always, we walk in mystery. We take it in, but we can never take it in fully.

Sometimes, in the face of the mystery of God and the mystery of life, all we can do is listen attentively for the voice of God. Sometimes God's voice beckons us, assures us, stops us, lets us float in a sea of unknowing.

“I am the Good Shepherd,” Jesus tells us in the Gospel today. Do we listen to the voices of the shepherd? We hear the voice of God when we are as open as children to mystery. Adults prefer not to imagine much. Instead, we say that we deal in real time with real issues. We are leery of wasting time.

Today’s readings call us to be adult believers who are not afraid of being identified as children of God, adult believers who trust that mystery both enfolds us and unfolds in our lives, adult believers who listen for the voice of God accompanying us, leading us through the dramas and delights of life.

~Sister Joan Sobala