What Is God’s Will For You Right Now?
"For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink" -Mt. 25:35
More often than not, God’s will for me today is a sink full of dishes and a bottomless basket of laundry. And like my 8-year-old, I often respond to these duties with a huff and an eye roll. There are so many More Important Tasks I could be doing.
Except that assessment doesn’t match up with the upside-down hierarchy of the Kingdom.
Parenthood is a daily answer to Christ’s call in today’s gospel: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, instructing the ignorant, and counseling the sorrowful. As we broker peace and administer mercy, we are – according to Jesus – blessed (Matt 5:9).
What are your daily duties? How are you answering Christ’s call to minister to him in them?
St. Teresa of Calcutta did great things for God, but she did them by offering her “yes” to the daily duties of caring for the sick and dying. Her days were filled with the menial tasks of dressing wounds and feeding the dying with gentleness and a smile.
Just because the square footage is small doesn’t mean we shouldn’t see our homes as a mission field. We can honor St. Paul’s instruction to “pray without ceasing” by gently drawing up sheets neatly, offering the menial task for the good of the tiny heads that will rest on the pillows.
Whatever the thankless tasks we are called to in our day to day, we can receive them as they are: gifts from the Lord, fuel for the slow burn of the refiner’s fire meant to purify our restless hunger for accolades and accomplishment, leaving nothing behind but shining humility.
Becoming contemplatives in action allows us to see our duties not as drudgery, but in the divine light with which they have been appointed to us.
Jesus assures us that whatever we do to the least of these, we do unto Him. How does it change our perspective if we imagine that it is Christ for whom we are setting a place at the table?
Samantha Stephenson
This reflection is an abbreviated version. You can listen to the full version on the Mama Prays podcast from Feb 7, 2025.