Do You Trust in Something Greater?

A Reflection on Luke 11: 29-32

By Heidi Knofczynski

In yesterday’s Gospel, Jesus’ words fall with such portentous weight that something inside me trembles a bit. Truly, the Christ-haunted areas in our souls quake in fear as His reality penetrates through all the vanities and reveals what you hold back from Him. Something greater is coming to bring true life, but only through death.  Can you let go of weak hopes for something greater?

In Ecclesiastes Solomon pondered how we “chase the wind “in search of something greater.  Riches, pleasure and even wisdom only give the illusion that our life “under the sun” will go on.  But even wise Solomon cannot see beyond death.  Solomon tells us to “cast our bread upon the waters”, since there is no reason to hoard up our treasures.  Enjoy what you have until you are gone.  Death will absorb you into its darkness eventually. Vanity of Vanities! Yet Jesus tells us:

But there is something greater than Solomon here.

Jonah goes into the belly of a fish -- which should have been a tomb -- in order for God to bring an urgent warning to the notorious city of Nineveh.  They listened and cast off their evil identity.  They placed their hope in a power that overcame a tomb.

And there is something greater than Jonah here.

Do you feel the same stirring in your spirit that I do when I read those words?  There is awesomeness to the reality of Jesus that is a quite unsettling.  The closer we allow Him to draw to us the more it illuminates what Solomon saw, but had no answer to:  The futility of our mortal lives. The sign of Jonah, however frightening it must have been to the Ninevites, reveals a hope beyond this world and a mercy that seeks out those who are in need, and they could not refuse it.  They cast off their futile and evil identity, they cast off their fear of letting go of vain hopes and they took hold of an eternal identity, and an eternal hope. 

What are you afraid to cast upon the waters? 

Savior, you have delivered us and You continue to create us in your image.  I enter into your mighty presence asking for the courage to continue yield my whole self you to you, whom death cannot overcome.