5th week in Easter Time, Monday – 29th April 2024 – Acts 14,5-18; Jn 14,21-26
Remaining As God’s Instrument
In the first reading, Paul and Barnabas meet all types of reactions as they make their journey through Asia Minor. They were rejected in Iconium and glorified and stoned in Lystra for healing a crippled man. After the healing, the Gentiles treated them like Greek gods, “Zeus and Hermes” who have come on earth. Paul and Barnabas point out that they are only instruments in the hand of the one, true God. They have no desire to receive the honour due only to the living God. It is that God who deserves all the glory and praise. As a reaction, they immediately tear their clothes and deny any claim to deity. In fact, they tell boldly the townspeople that they worship a “vain thing.” Since Paul can’t turn their thinking by showing how Jesus of Nazareth fulfills the prophecies of the Messiah in the Jewish Scriptures, he talks to them about their beginnings, their Creator. He offers the people a relationship with the real God, Creator of the universe who loves them and wants a relationship with them.
God has chosen to work in and through us humans His divine message. It is truly remarkable that God empowers us to be ambassadors of the Good News to others. As we share the Good News, others may mistake the goodness and kindness which we extend to them as simply our gifts, rather it is truly a gift from God. They may try to give thanks to us. But we need to redirect the gratitude to the God to whom it is due. As we reflect on how God can and does make us instruments of His Message, we need to focus all the attention and praise back to the one who sends us. We are not to be the center of others’ focus. We must point to the God who is in us and working through us.
