God is always present and active in our lives. He does not distance himself from our troubles and afflictions but is present with us, comforting, consoling, providing and fighting our battles.

This Sunday’s readings call us to take a closer look at how God is working in our lives. In the first reading we see the Israelites being reminded of how God led them out of Egypt and he is now calling them his own…“a kingdom of priests, a holy nation”. What an awesome call! A call that is extended to us through our baptism.

God’s love is unlike any other love we have ever experienced. He is the author and the definition of love. The second reading expounds on the magnitude of God’s love for us, a love that is unconditional, and relentless. A radical love that took the Lord Jesus to the Cross while we were still sinning against him, so that we may be reconciled once more with God.

I too was once living in the slavery of sinfulness but the Lord Jesus paid the ultimate price for my freedom. He set me free from bondage and placed me in a spacious place and called me his child. When we accept this love deep within us, it transforms us from within, we are never the same again.

Many of us experienced this love in a retreat like the 4-steps retreat where the love of God flooded us to the core of our being and we were assured that we belonged to God and we were his treasured possession.

Yet there are still so many people in this world who are lost, broken and wounded, living in affliction and bondage. They have not experienced God’s love in their lives; they do not know him as their shepherd. This is what the Lord Jesus saw when he saw the crowds and his heart was moved with compassion.

Do we hear the compassionate voice of the Lord Jesus summoning us by name to do his work in the world? We are his hands, and feet in this world. The Lord Jesus is commissioning and sending us out with the same instructions he gave the apostles telling us not to go into alien territory, but to go to our homes, our work places, our families, our friends, to our own spheres of influence.

Our words and our actions, the very essence of our being is to proclaim to those around us that “The kingdom of heaven is at hand”. More than our words, it is our life examples that need to proclaim the Good News. That is more inspirational and would cause more life transformations in our neighbourhoods.

Prayer: Abba Father, thank you for loving me and calling me your own. Here I am Lord, use my life to spread the Good News. Amen.