Blog #16 Remember the plan - Taste the joy

Remember the plan - Taste the joy If you are like the rest of us, there are most likely many things you once knew that you have forgotten. Some times it is good to forget, and some times it is bad. A business appointment forgotten can be expensive. To forget to turn back the clock when we go off daylight saving time in the Fall can cost a 'free' hour of sleep. To forget your wife's birthday makes it harder for her to love you. and to forget the Good News of Jesus makes it harder for God to love us and for us to love God. If you have read very much of modern literature you will find a good bit of sadness and despair, little real meaning to life , rare hope for life after death, and little reason for geniune happines and joy. Sex, money, entertainment, and popularity all prove traitors in the end, unable in themselves to give us the complete happiness and meaning we all desire. But the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus, tells us where we came from, why we exist, and what is the outcome and meaning of human life. A plan is given to us to follow that produces joy peace and happiness for all. The danger is that we will forget the Good News or only remember it from time to time and apply it to a portion of our lives rather than always in all that we do. Then we pay the price of our forgetfulness. We might as well be as the unbelievers, without hope, if we forget that we are different. If we forget that God loves us as a Father, then the joy of being His children will not be ours. If we do not remember that Christ died for us, then we will not know the joy of being saved in His love. If we do not remember the call we have from God to love all people, then we will hardly treat them as brothers and sisters. It isn't that we plan to forget. It just happens that way if we are not careful. In other words most of us are not consciously evil or vicious when we do not live the Gospel message more effectively, no more than you are evil in not setting your clock back when daylight saving time goes out. But it is a mistake, and we pay the price of an hour's sleep, or in the case of the Gospel a life that is less holy, starving people in a world of plenty, less awareness of God, less prayer, and a Church that is divided, contrary to the prayer of Jesus, in an age of almost instant world- wide communication. May each of us remember the Good News of God's plan for us, and taste the joy that comes from remembering His love for all !