God Comes to Us

Yesterday's first reading tells us about Moses going to meet God in a Tent he pitched. There, God came to him in a pillar of cloud. The passage reads...

Exodus 33:7-10
Moses used to take the Tent and pitch it outside the camp, at some distance from the camp. He called it the Tent of Meeting. Anyone who had to consult Yahweh would go out to the Tent of Meeting, outside the camp. Whenever Moses went out to the Tent, all the people would rise. Every man would stand at the door of his tent and watch Moses until he reached the Tent; the pillar of cloud would come down and station itself at the entrance to the Tent, and Yahweh would speak with Moses.

The book of Exodus tells the happenings before Jesus came into our world. And in this short passage, we can realise that as the "pillar of cloud would come down and station itself at the entrance to the Tent" in the early days, so then did God Himself come down and stationed Himself in our world through the Person of Jesus, fully Human and fully God. In a society that is growing in intelligence, affluence and self-dependency, God is well aware of our need for a more concrete prove of His existence and infinite love for us. Our faith is increasingly challenged by the many fruitless analysis of circumstances and the need for logical explanations in the quest of being in control of our lives and beliefs. Yet, our infinitely patient God knows that left to our own strength, we can never ascend to Him. And as such, recognising and empathizing with the reality of who we are, He comes to us and this time, not as a pillar of cloud but as a human person Himself, real and fully present for others to witness. He let Himself be seen and revealed, thus, showing us the way back to our Father in the most explicit manner, made public for all those who lived in His earthly time.

We, the people belonging to the current generation, do not have the physical presence of Jesus in Person among us. However, God continues to come to us, to make Himself available for us readily, and to be stationed, this time, at the door of our hearts, knocking persistently until we finally open these doors to allow Him in. He stations Himself within our hearts permanently and unconditionally. He comes to us in the Sacraments of Holy Communion and Reconciliation, the former, allowing us to be renewed, nourished and strengthened by His own Body and Blood, and the latter, allowing also the graces of repentance, mercy and love, which make us whole again in the renewed desire to walk more fully in His ways.

It was God who came to the Israelites at the time of Moses;
It was God who came to the Jews by being born into the world;
And certainly, it is still this same God who comes to us today in many forms.

Moses went to the Tent to meet God, to consult Him, to communicate with Him and in so doing, was engaged with God in a mutual relationship of love. Do we, like Moses, go, pro-actively, to meet God in the Eucharist, in the Blessed Sacrament and in the Sacrament of Reconciliation? How frequently do we do so?  Let us take time to reflect and ask ourselves how God has come to us. Let us also learn the discipline of going to our place of meeting to meet Him personally, as frequently as we can. We pray for the graces to desire to meet God daily and to thank and praise Him for His initiative in coming to us and being so accessible to us.

Wednesday 27 July 2011
1.47am