Esther 4:10-12,17-19 / Matthew 7:7-12
It is really intriguing how we can often evade the truth and the reality.
For eg. we may have heard of cases about other people, or even of ourselves, of how we manage to side-step the reality of the situation.
We may have a peculiar physical pain and yet we try to self-medicate and to numb it, only to be afflicted later with a serious illness.
We may laugh at the ostrich for burying its head in the sand to avoid facing the reality and the truth.
But are we not often like that? We don't want to look, hear or know.
In the 1st reading, Queen Esther could have just ignored the impending annihilation of her people and just cared about her own survival.
But she knew that to do such a treacherous deed would be to deny her faith and reject any possibility of God's intervention.
Also, to do that would bring about disastrous consequences for her.
In the gospel, Jesus challenges us to question and to search for the meaning of our lives, as well as to examine our lives.
To have no questions about our lives and about our faith may mean that we might be like an ostrich who does not want to see the reality and the truth of our lives.
Yet God will always be asking us about our lives. He will be searching for us when we are lost. He will be knocking on the door of our hearts waiting for us to open to Him.
Let us pull our heads and our hearts out of the sand and look at God and hear His voice.