We must assess our thoughts and beliefs and reckon whether they are moving us closer to conformity to Christ or farther away from it.

...Christ did not appoint professors, but followers. If Christianity ... is not reduplicated in the life of the person expounding it, then he does not expound Christianity, for Christianity is a message about living and can only be expounded by being realized in men's lives. --Soren Kierkegaard: (1813 –1855: was a Danish philosopher, theologian, & poet)

Gospel Text: (LK 9:57-62)

As Jesus and his disciples were proceeding

on their journey, someone said to him,

“I will follow you wherever you go.”

Jesus answered him,

“Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests,

but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.”

And to another he said, “Follow me.”

But he replied, “Lord, let me go first and bury my father.”

But he answered him, “Let the dead bury their dead.

But you, go and proclaim the Kingdom of God.”

And another said, “I will follow you, Lord,

but first let me say farewell to my family at home.”

Jesus answered him, “No one who sets a hand to the plow

and looks to what was left behind is fit for the Kingdom of God.”

Ordinary time presents us with an opportunity to consider again the fact that living as a Christian calls us to meet the Lord in the real stuff of daily life. He is already there, walking before us and beckoning us to follow after Him.

The Apostle Paul wrote to the early Christians in Galatia, No longer do I live but Christ lives in me and the life I now live I live by faith in the Son of God.(Gal. 2:20) That can become our experience as we give ourselves over to Him and seek to live by the power of the Holy Spirit. Christians can live differently precisely because we live in Jesus Christ.

The original twelve apostles, upon hearing the words Come, follow me abandoned their nets, their jobs and their father, to follow Him. (Mk 1: 14-20) They were ordinary fisherman who heard the Lord. They did not stay put when they heard that voice. They took the risk which lies at the heart of discipleship. They left their nets, their place of comfort and safety, and followed Him on the adventure of faith. 


"There are only two kinds of people in the end," CS Lewis once famously wrote. "Those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.' All that are in Hell choose it." 

It's the choice between life and death, light and darkness, heaven and hell.