Come to Jesus

Mass Readings: March 6

First:	Exodus 32:7-14
Resp:	Psalm 106:19-23
Gospel:	John 5:31-47

John 5:39-40  You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, (40)  yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. 

Are we like the people of Israel who soon turned away from the ways God had shown them?  Are we a stiff necked people?  Are we a people who know the scriptures and use them to comfort ourselves while remaining in our sin, to justify our works of iniquity?

Today it is popular to be a "Bible Christian".  We study, we discuss, we buy new books and hear new speakers.  But the question to us remains, are we willing to come to Jesus.  When times get tough there is a saying that we have to have a "come to Jesus meeting".  This is a time when the truth is brought to bear in all it's harsh reality.  A time when those who have done wrong will be forced to face the reality of what they have done.  Yet I think that we have a tendency to want our coming to Jesus to be a place where we can hide our sins.  But we can't hide.

Praise be to God that someone is willing to stand in the gap for us.  Moses did it for the people of Israel. He pleaded with God to spare them from His wrath.  Jesus stands in the gap for us. Though we too deserve to be destroyed by God's wrath, Jesus makes a way for us to be saved.  But just searching the scriptures it isn't enough. We have to have that "come to Jesus" meeting.

Father, sometimes I fear the truth.  I want to just pretend that it doesn't exist, that it would just conveniently go away.  But your son Jesus is the truth and the way, and the life.  Help me, by your Holy Spirit, to always seek the truth rather than the praise and the ways of others. Help me to be willing to come to Jesus.

Amen