Reflections
“The Lord is my light and my salvation.”The Psalm is about trusting the Lord and our desire to spend the rest of our days in His presence. The Psalm says, "One thing I ask of the Lord; this I seek: to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.”
Perhaps this desire to be with
the Lord is what inspired Simon
Peter and his brother Andrew
that day by the Sea of Galilee,
when they left their father and
their nets to follow Jesus and
be his disciples (Sunday's Gospel).
Surely, Peter and Andrew recognized
Jesus as their own personal light
and their own personal Savior.
As the Psalm says, "The Lord is
my light and my salvation."
As we grow older, we too take steps
on our journey to be with the Lord,
to enter His house. Recall that Jesus
said, “My house has many mansions.”
It is no accident that older people
want to go to daily Mass and be with
the Lord as much as possible. They
are called to that promise of eternal
joy when they may “gaze on the
loveliness of the Lord” all the days
of their lives.
Amen
Discussion Questions for Reflection
1. Two verses of the Psalm assure us that we should not fear, or be afraid
of anyone, so long as the Lord is our refuge and our salvation. How do you apply these verses to your daily life?
2. Our psalmist asks, "To dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life that I may gaze on the loveliness of the Lord." Where is the house of the Lord, and how do you believe you will get there?
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading this Blog and Psalm 27, it resonated with me in so many ways. When a child, I'd tell my parents I was fearful about a given thing, to which our Mother would reply "trust to God, when God is with us, who can be against us?" Or when I wanted a specific thing to occur, I was told to pray about it, and when I said "I've been praying about it and nothing has happened", our Mother would reply "we have our time, and God has His time, and His time is much better; He knows our needs better than we do"... And it was always true! Light over Darkness..It's our choice, when we wake up in the morning, we can worry or we can worship. When we begin our day with light, darkness has nowhere to hide. Peace within us doesn't begin by accident - it's when we start our day allowing God's presence to give us an inner peace.
We must be patient and we must have sincere trust, waiting on the Lord, and we must trust God's timing, which isn't always immediate. We build strength and courage by trusting God's presence and this trust gives us inner peace, with knowledge that God is working on our behalf, unseen...We don't need everything around us to be calm to find peace, peace is not the absence of trouble, it is the presence of trust. Next time anxiety arises, we should not run from it, but respond with faith, we must say to
ourselves "the Lord is my light and my salvation - whom shall I fear?" By no longer reacting to fear - we are resting in faith, which gives us an inner peace...light over darkness. Instead of focusing on what's against us, we focus on what's within us. Sometimes God doesn't take away the battle, but He strengthens us to walk
through it untouched.