Don't take this personally but I think we are all thieves and con artists.
See:
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| Note: You aren't this cool about it either... |
I am wholly convinced that we are committing highway robbery on a daily basis. Now I want you to put down the blunt instrument you are reaching for and stop looking up my address. Here is what I mean:
We are robbing God. It is not like we can help it but we are loved on a level that cannot be comprehended. This love is what we are called to imitate. (Christian? Christ-like?) Stop asking how we swindle God, I am getting there, in fact, here it is. God freely bestows his unending, unconditional grace and love upon us. What do we offer in return? How often do we haggle the buying price? Though, we are already bought and paid for. In His great Love for us did he not, in the ultimate act of humility, pay the greatest price for us? This is what we believe. Yet we still haggle and ask for a better deal, as if that were possible. Unconditional love, traded for a bit of conditional love here and there sounds good right? Were it you or I being offered that deal I am certain we would have none of it! However, despite this He willingly takes the deal! Even as we are raking him over the coals he allows it because we are so loved! God takes our imperfect love and magnifies it. He returns our human love with so much more.
It is not only in this way that we find ways to cheat God. When we claim to follow God and fail to live up to what that means we are like thieving employees. We are the guys skimming off the top. We are cutting the corners here and there, testing what we can get away with. That always turns into more and more. We are reluctant to accept the difficulty of what is asked of us. Loving the world is hard. We want an easier way to do things so we always look for shortcuts, or the minimum acceptable amount of work. The thing is no one ever said this was going to be easy. Christ, the God-man Himself, said that it would actually be very very hard to follow in His footsteps. This is why it is ever more important that we learn to love each other. We carry each other through the hard times. Christian, non-Christian, it applies to all. We were asked to love like God to glorify God, BY LOVING OTHERS. That is never going to be easy.
Simply put God loves us, asks us to love like Him and put it to action. What is He getting in return from us?
Here we are in Lent and it is time to evaluate how we love. Can we ever be perfect imitations of Christ? no that is why we need eternity. Everyday presents the chance to make ourselves better than yesterday. In order to be efficient at this we must not just acknowledge our shortcomings but ACCEPT them. Embrace that truth "I am not perfect, i can always improve." Lent is for finding the corners we cut, and returning the 5 dollars we took from the register, and taking on the responsibility of being a true, loving, holy Catholic at a fair price. Otherwise we are nothing more than: (I'll let Alan Rickman take us home)
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| ...an exceptional thief. |
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