A Reflection for Wednesday of the Seventh Week of Easter
Find today’s readings here.
I am a worrier. Ask anyone who knows me and they will tell you that I tend to fear the unknown and do all in my power to prepare for the inevitable calamity that is coming. Indeed, the world can often feel like a fraught place. So in addition to identifying the nearest exit, keeping up-to-date on recommended health screenings (mostly), and confirming my children’s whereabouts on our family tracking app Life360, I pray. Sometimes the prayers are general and sometimes they are quite specific, but they almost always include requests for security, peace, joy and faith for myself and especially for others.
In John’s Gospel today, Jesus asks God the same thing on behalf of his disciples: “Holy Father, keep them in your name.” Having been human, Jesus understands the challenges, temptations and struggles of life on earth and prays that God protects them, and “keep them from the Evil One,” and provides the care “that they may be one just as we are one.” Jesus recognizes that the intercession of His Father is essential for the safekeeping of those he loves.
So while it was very reassuring that my prayerful requests mirrored Jesus’, there was something else that resonated with me quite deeply in today’s readings, perhaps because I had a birthday last month. While not a milestone, my birthday did give me a moment to pause and recognize how quickly time is passing and how now I have more years on earth behind me than ahead of me. I think that is why I was especially moved by the portion of today’s scripture in which Jesus seeks God’s intercession because he recognizes that he will not always be among his disciples to care for them.“When I was with them I protected them in your name that you gave me, and I guarded them, and none of them was lost except the son of destruction, in order that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you.”
Like Jesus, I won’t always be in the earthly world to protect and care for those people that I love. And so, like Jesus, I will rely on God to provide that care for me. And perhaps, if I fully trust in God’s presence and intercession, I won’t need to worry quite so much because I will choose faith over fear. Maybe you will, too.
