IS GOD PARTIAL?

Peter (in Acts 10:34): “I truly understand that God shows no partiality.” Really? Really. Both. Let me explain, or at least try to.

I am the oldest of five: two brothers and two sisters, ten years between my younger sister Luci and me. Every once in a while, Luci in a snit, would go up to our Mom and whine, “You love Billy more than you love me.” And Mom would take her aside and say, “No. Billy is my first born, but I am not partial to him. I love each of you equally. How could I not? I gave birth to each of you.”

So would God say to us: “I gave birth to each of you through your parents. How could I be partial to any one of you? I love you equally, really.”

Really? Whenever I look into the bathroom mirror, I see someone who is supremely blessed: I have a wonderful loving wife; five great daughters; six special grandchildren; superb friends. We own our own home, financially support our church, Boys Town, St. Jude’s Hospital, local feeding programs and more. Then I think of the orphans living in Boys Town, the children with cancer at St. Jude’s – and their parents, the people who come to the feeding programs in our area, the countless people in need who came to my office or called on the phone in my 53 years as a priest, and I ask: “Why am I so blessed?” 

My answer to that is simple” I don’t know.” But what I do know is what God expects of me because of my blessings, what God expects of each one of us who is so blessed. It is not to compare blessings or wish we were even more blessed. It is to always be prepared to use the blessings, whatever they are – our time, our special talents, our financial resources – to the best of our ability to serve those who are less blessed, who need what we have in abundance to enable them to live better.

It is not enough to simply be thankful for our blessings or, even worse, to think we somehow have deserved them because we are somehow special, that God loves us more than God loves others. We are not and God does not even though in the eyes of those less blessed it may seem that we are. The only way to give a modicum of thanks is to share what we have with those who are in need. We can only do so much and what we do may seem so little. In fact, it truly is. But the little in our eyes is often huge in the eyes of the one in need.

We can spend hours wondering why it really seems that God is partial so some and not others. But that, like God, is beyond our comprehension and will always be. It is not for us to reason why. All we can do is be thankful and demonstrate that thanks each day by sharing from our abundant blessings with those in need. That is all we can do, all we can ask of ourselves, and, I suspect, all God asks and expects of us as well.