DAILY HOMILIES #labour

God has never lost a battle. Even now, God is still winning. Those who wait on God (who never give up on prayer) will run and never be weary. They walk and never faint. Do not interpret your present circumstances as a weakness on the part of God. He knows what He is doing. For instance, it may be difficult to believe that failing that exam was God’s gift for you. What if that failure was the fuel you needed to sharpen your skills and motivate you to discover your true potential?

If the only reason you are in church today is to ask God for bread (material blessings that can pass away), then you are not different from the crowds who wanted Jesus to feed them again because they were hungry. Jesus disappointed the crowds – He refused to feed them the second time. Seeking God for bread alone brings disappointment.

Prayer brings joy; it is both spiritual and therapeutic. Prayer helps to offload your burdens, calm your nerves and relieve your fears. Appreciate prayer because it can bring you the things you desire and because prayer (itself) is good for you. If a problem shared is a problem half-solved, prayer is sharing your problems with the only person who can truly solve them.

One of the ways we bury our gifts is by looking for excuses to avoid work. When you don’t want to do something, you would always have an excuse (a valid reason) for not doing it. According to this foolish servant, the Master was a hard man reaping where he had not sown, meaning that, for him, his Master did not deserve the profit. For this reason, the Master referred to this servant as a wicked person. It is a sign of wickedness if we fail to use the talents, gifts and abilities that God has given us.

We cannot all become ordained ministers, consecrated men and women, bishops, or cardinals in the church, but at the end of the day, not even the Pope will receive a greater reward than the newly baptised. Jesus says: “The last will be first, and the first will be last.” This means that there would be no last or first.

In Nigeria today, the one factor responsible for large crowds flocking around men of God and churches springing up everywhere is the overwhelming failure of our leadership. The honest truth is that over seventy per cent of those who come into our churches are not looking for Jesus like these crowd in our Gospel passage. Today’s Christians are looking for those basic things that any responsible government should provide.