Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the
law, and the prophets: he is Jesus, son of Joseph, from Nazareth.” Nathanael replied, “Can
anything good come from Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” When Jesus
saw Nathanael coming, he said of him, “Here comes an Israelite, a true one; there is nothing
false in him.” Nathanael asked him, “How do you know me?” And Jesus said to him, “Before
Philip called you, you were under the fig tree, and I saw you.” Nathanael answered, “Master,
you are the Son of God! You are the king of Israel!” But Jesus replied, “You believe because
I said, ‘I saw you under the fig tree.’ But you will see greater things than that. Truly, I say to
you, you will see the heavens opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending
upon the Son of Man.”
Reflect
Openness” As Jesus’ disciples, why do we need some kind of pruning? For even while it is
true that we have already decided to follow Jesus, our life has not been overhauled overnight.
We are not yet finished. We are still in process. At times, we still exhibit a certain duplicity in
the kind of faith we profess in relation to the kind of life we lead. Sometimes we say , for
example, we love God while we keep hating one another. There is a need to bridge the gap
between our profession of faith and our everyday life. Our close-minded disposition widens
this gap between faith and life. The antidote to this, therefore, is openness. We need to be
more open should we want to become more integrated individuals. Jesus’ invitation to his
early followers was to “come and see.” This invitation is a summons to be more open.
Openness is the first step toward integration. When we are open, we can accept the
truth about ourselves – the beautiful and not-so-beautiful alike. Openness also enables us to
transform, through the help of God’s grace, whatever is not beautiful about us into something
that contributes to making us whole and guileless.
© Copyright Bible Diary 2024