26/07/2025
PRAYER OF THE RIGHTEOUS TOUCHES THE HEART OF GOD: A reflection on the seventeenth Sunday of the year C ordinary time 27th July 2025.
One day people were travelling on a bus for a journey. There was a lot of troubles along the way. They came across a seer who told them that in the bus there was a person who was unworthy before God and is the one causing all the problems and unless he's out of the bus all the passagers would perish. As a result he told them that there was a sacred tree and they should alight one by one, go and touch the tree and whoever was unworthy would be struck dead by lightening. They did as the seer had said and the driver was the first to go and touch the tree and he was not struck. The others followed one by one. Finally it was the turn of the last person. He was loaded with tension because all the rest had gone out, touched the tree and were back safe into the bus. He feared to go out but people forced him out to go and touch the tree so that they would be saved from perishing. Still trembling, he went out and touched the tree. No sooner had he touched the tree than a lightening struck the bus and killed all the people. He was the only survivor. It meant that he was the righteous one and was saving the others from perishing. In the first reading from the book of Genesis 18:20-32, Abraham being a righteous man before God pleaded to God on behalf of S***m and Gomorrah. God had vowed to destroy the people of those villages because of their sins. But Abraham pleaded to God that should there be at least fifty righteous people God should not really destroy them together with the evil ones. Abraham continued to reduce the number. Suppose they lack five from the fifty and God said he would save the villages if he got fourty five. Abraham pleaded more, suppose there was fourty, thirty, twenty, and even as few as ten and God saidi he would not destroy S***m and Gomorrah if he got ten righteous people. So righteous people are a security to whoever is near them from eternal destruction because God's heart is touched by a righteous heart. If God was to destroy your family, your village, your church or your society would you stand to be counted as the righteous one to have God save the others? Remember that one truly righteous person can not be contaminated by thousands of evil people. Stand up as a light in a dark place which can't be put out by the darkness. In the Gospel today from Luke 11:1-13, The disciples of Jesus asked him to teach them to pray just as John taught his disciples to pray. It means that the disciples of Jesus had known the power of prayers by seeing how Jesus was praying. We should also be good examples to be emulated by others. Jesus taught them the Lord's Prayer. He proceeded to educate them about the power of prayers. He gave them the parable of the person getting a friend at night and goes to his neighbor to beg for bread. The neighbor says that he's already in bed with his children and thus should not be disturbed. The bible says that the persistence of the person will make the neighbor to wake up and give him what he needs. Thus Jesus taught his disciples, pray and it will be given to you, seek and you will find and knock and the door will be opened for you. Thus when you pray, don't just stay there, go to work. If you pray and work and yet you have not got then you can knock the door and the door Will be open for you. Unfortunately some people don't want to work but they are perpetual beggars while they are strong enough to work.
Jesus assures that God will always answer our prayers even more than we human beings do to our children. We should thus strive to to be righteous so that our prayers can please God and he'll surely answer us and grant us our good heart's desires. May God bless you and have a prayerful week.
