We live in an age which always looking for the silver bullet which will solve all our problems. There is a strong belief that some hero will come along who will provide all the answers and rescue us from our own dilemmas. There is a longing for an avatar who will control our lives and make all the difficult decisions for us. This may be the attraction of the cinema where we can escape every day and discover a person who always comes through for us. Yet in the midst of the Gospels with Jesus in Nazareth, we encounter a person who is well known to his audience and who have certain expectations that their familiarity with him will win them special favours. Yet somehow it is this very familiarity which disappoints them maybe because they have already made up their minds about who he is and their hearts remained closer to an expanded vision. In fact, they become so irate when he starts to talk of miracles worked among those who were considered alien to their community they seek his destruction.
There may be a lesson in this for all of us the reading from 1st Letter of St Paul to the Corinthians Chapter 4. Here the emphasis is not so much on signs as on the intent of the person who seeks to live in union with God. It is not so much on gifts received but on how we become transformed by God's presence. There is an intention which seeks to be at one with the heart of God. In fact, it is so important that we would do well to consider how we seek to allow God to draw us to centre on not on our own needs but how we are present to others:
"Love is patient, love is kind.
It is not jealous, it is not pompous,
It is not inflated, it is not rude,
it does not seek its own interests,
it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury,
it does not rejoice over wrongdoing
but rejoices with the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things endures all things."(http://usccb.org/bible/readings/020319.cfm, accessed 28th January 2019)
Maybe this is even something we need to consider each day in how we are present. We often ask God to seek us on our terms rather than surrendering ourselves to God's vision for our lives. The central sense that we gain is that God's love is constant and undeterred by our human frailty. We are called to be people who return again and again to discover this person of Jesus in our prayer, our reflection and our actions that we discover a communion with God both inside us and with others. This is not undertaken by abstracting us from the world but in discovering how God is present to all things and all people in a way which transforms us.
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