The Father Is Our Destiny

March 16, 2018 Friday (Week IV of Lent)

Wisdom 2:1, 12-22; Psalm 34; John 7:1-10, 25-30

He calls blest the destiny of the just and boasts that God is his Father. Wisdom 2:16

Wisdom is “the habit of seeing everything in the light of our last end”—which is to be one with God. But

not just with God as Creator, knowing everything he has made and done. The Christian “wise” live to be one with God as Father—sharing his own existence. Drawn into his heart. Into understanding of his innermost thoughts. Totally one with him in will and desire.

This is our “destiny”—God’s intention for us.

Jesus—Wisdom incarnate—lived and died for this. His every act was wisdom and love, because his goal in every thought, word and deed was to give us what the Father sent him to give: “life to the full” (John 10:10).

That is why we killed him: because he focused us on a destiny “greater than our hearts” (1John 3:20). We cannot live or work for this destiny unless we die to be reborn, with God as our Father. “No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit (John 3:5)

Jesus’s New Law gives guidelines for focusing on our destiny. It begins, “Blessed are the poor…” (Matthew 5:3). That can be a turn-off.

Christ’s New Law is not our destiny, but a means to it. Those who “call blest the destiny of the just” are wise: they are “looking to an end” beyond this world.

ACTION: Become destiny-oriented.

PRAYER: “Father, give us this day…”