Choosing What’s Good

Posted by: L.E.S. on: October 6, 2014

In: Everyday Life | Faith | Family | Friends | Holidays
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For the LORD is good;

his mercy endures for ever,

and his faithfulness to all generations.

~ Psalm 100:5*

According to the care sheet, zebra finches should happily eat banana, melon, kale, carrots, eggs and whole wheat pasta, among other things.

Not our birds. Not in this lifetime. They’d happily watch those foods spoil in the dish.

Syd and Bart, our zebra finches

Now, millet is another story. Syd and Bart live for millet. Or rather, Syd lives to enjoy millet; Bart lives to take the timothy hay out of their hay ball and throw it on the cage floor and to take baths in the water dish.

Clearly, our sweet finches don’t know how to choose what’s good for them. Neither do people.

If we knew how to choose what was good for us, we wouldn’t try to find our stress relief or even our happiness in food, alcohol, drugs, work, money (earning, spending or saving it) and so on. None of these things can satisfy us.

Instead, we would choose God. We would choose to spend time with him—praising and worshipping him, sharing our joys and sorrows and worries with him, learning the path he wants us to take and then following it.

This coming weekend, Canadians will celebrate Thanksgiving. As we gather with family and friends, we could take the opportunity to give thanks for God’s presence in our lives and his constant and loving care for us.

Those of us whose children have started down the road to receiving their First Eucharist or being confirmed could renew our own commitment to living out our faith. We could commit to spending time in Eucharistic adoration, praying the rosary on our own or with others, or making more time to read the Word. If we’ve been away from the Church, we could receive the sacrament of reconciliation and then fully participate in the Mass. And those who have found a spiritual home in the Catholic Church could take the opportunity to learn more about their faith and the Church through the RCIA program.

I pray that we would learn how to choose what is good—God, and faith and trust in him—and that our loved ones, friends and colleagues would be drawn to him because of our example.