Our readings today again speak of "thirsting" for God – a desire to "go and have a face to face encounter with God." God the Father wants us to thirst for him; he placed such a thirst deep within each of us; we have only to acknowledge the thirst and the means by which he also gave for that thirst to be quenched: obedience.
In the story of the curing of Naaman, the Syrian, it was finally the obedience to God's instructions – given through the prophet Elisha – to plunge seven times into the Jordan River – that brought about the desired curing from leprosy. But first of all, most of the people involved engaged in debate about the pros and cons of doing what was ordered.
Jesus tells the people in the synagogue in Nazareth – his hometown – that he would have to do most of his work for people other than his own people: the Gentiles, rather than the Jews, because the Jews were just stubbornly disobedient to the promptings of God the Father to believe the person he placed squarely in their midst to cure them and heal them and restore them. The price they had to pay was simple faith – they could not come up with enough even among them to allow Jesus to do more than Jesus a few minor restorations. And so the bountiful harvest would go to the "foreigners."
We today have our choice. We can use the obedience of our faith and invite Jesus to cleanse, renew, heal and strengthen us any way he knows we need – so that we can live useful lives on behalf of others – or not!
We still will always have a subtle, deep longing and yearning and thirst for God – how we use that yearning, how we connect it with faith, how we live our faith in action – will identify us as God's children! Let us use it wisely!
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