Challenges Are Welcome

If you were baptized, you can be sure that there will be many challenges in your life. The first and the most beautiful is the one that for the rest of your life God must always be first. Among many invitations from the world this one coming from God will always be the most important. But there are also other challenges. One of them is to love our neighbor the same way God loves us. I am calling this a challenge because it requires our full commitment.

On my last blog I talked about a dialogue. Good dialogue comes out of true love. God is in dialogue with us all of the time, not only when we follow his will. He speaks to us even more when we are lost, but it doesn't mean that he changes commandments for us to make everything easier. He speaks to help us to reach the beauty and holiness prepared for us from the very beginning.

I think this is our work in this world - to show this love reflecting God, not to damage the beauty to make everything gray and dark just to please each other. It always amazes me when I see someone I haven't seen in a few years and they are grateful I didn't give up on them when they were wrong. They were mad at me in the past, but after a few years they discovered that what I told them wasn't against them, but to save them. I believe every pastor is doing this, every parent is doing this. Our work is to challenge, but the fruits are ready to be harvested now. We did it because we love them and we wanted to save them from a painful price to be paid. Unfortunately, not everybody was listening and now they are struggling. It was a difficult dialogue, but it wasn't for nothing.

Every day that I open the Bible, I can see that this dialogue is challenging, but at the same time it makes my life better. Just think about the Apostles-- just a dozen of them was enough to proclaim the Word of God and to spread the Church. They didn't please anybody, but they took them to the beauty of the truth. This is what we have to do today. We have to take all those that are lost, under the oppression of sin, and show them the way that leads to life. Do not compromise the truth; show the beauty of it.