Taking the Heat!

We decided to have a picture taken at the Al Ain Desert in the UAE. The sight was breathtaking -- a sea of sand: ever changing, ever beautiful. Yet, I don't think I could even stand for 40 minutes in the blazing heat of the desert! I suddenly remembered the 40 years in the desert of the Israelites.  It is in this context that the Chosen people of God were molded -- without air-conditioning! What kept them going was the promise of a new land of their own; although in the journey they have been complaining (which I could now relate), and even unfaithful to God by fashioning a golden calf while Moses was us up in the mountain conversing with God. Despite their unfaithfulness, God remained faithful; and indeed through Joshua they entered the Land of Promise.

In life, we sometimes take the heat.  Some would say (in Filipino), "Napag-initan ako" or translated to : "Someone doesn't like me and is purposely putting me down -- I'm taking the heat from this person."  St. Paul would encourage us through his experience, "We are afflicted in every way, but not constrained; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed..." (2 Cor. 4: 8-9).

Let the example of  endurance that the Israelites and St. Paul showed while "taking the heat" inspire us to move forward; for there is a promise of a new land -- "flowing with milk and honey".  Let His will be done, for what God wants is to mold us into like Christ; and the heat we are taking may be the very Cross that would lead us to the Father.