I Will Follow But…

“When Jesus saw a crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other shore. A scribe approached and said to him, ‘Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.’ Jesus answered him, ‘Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.’ Another of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, let me go first and bury my father.’ But Jesus answered him, ‘Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead.’”  (Matthew 8:18-22)

In today’s gospel, Jesus tells the disciple to “let the dead bury the dead” and wants the disciple to follow him now. Just like the disciple, we want to follow Jesus but there are a few things we want to do first. They aren’t necessarily bad things, although at times it is something sinful that we want to do just one more time. The disciple just wanted to bury his father before following Christ. This story illustrates how nothing can get in the way of us being disciples, not even our family and loved ones. It is good to periodically look at our lives and see where we allow other things to come before God.

God is continually calling us to him. Even if we are following Him, there are always ways that we can deepen that relationship. The challenge is to seek out those places in our everyday lives that God wants us to tweak. Is it in our prayer life? Has our prayer become “routine”? Do we pour out our heart unto the Lord, or are we just going through the motions? Do we cry out in anguish when that is what we are feeling? Or do we speak politely to God, not wanting to offend him?

Maybe there is an area in our lives that God wants healing to occur but we don’t want to face our past. The only way for the healing to occur is to face it but maybe fear is keeping us from doing it. Or maybe we are just too tired to keep working on it because working through it is exhausting. God is calling me to share my witness, which I am no longer afraid to do, but this time he is calling me to share a part of me that I have never shared before. I keep praying about it to make sure that he really wants me to do this and I keep getting “yes” for my answer but….a part of me isn’t ready. So I will continue to pray about it and share with God my fears and anxieties about what he is asking of me. And I will continue to pray for the courage to do His will, to follow Him now.