{"id":1609,"date":"2009-11-13T07:00:52","date_gmt":"2009-11-13T12:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/faithfilledmom.com\/?p=1609"},"modified":"2009-11-13T21:32:40","modified_gmt":"2009-11-14T02:32:40","slug":"keys-to-the-kingdom-november-11-daily-reflection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/faithfilledmom.com\/keys-to-the-kingdom-november-11-daily-reflection\/","title":{"rendered":"Keys to the Kingdom, November 13 Daily Reflection"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Keys

Keys to the kingdom<\/p><\/div>\n

How far off do the keys to the kingdom appear\u00a0to you right now?\u00a0 Are you dwarfed by how far out of reach those keys are?\u00a0 What do you perceive to be the kingdom on the other side of that door?\u00a0 Will it be the success all we Americans strive for; untold wealth, lots of material possessions or the\u00a0 CEO position of your company?\u00a0 Is the kingdom actually heaven, eternal life?\u00a0 What do you define as your kingdom?\u00a0 What are your goals in life and the after life? Where do we get the keys?\u00a0<\/p>\n

A missionary priest visited our parish a year or so ago and talked about people who serve and try to live as God wants us to by sharing all that we have with others. \u00a0He said that our destiny is really not our business.\u00a0 That struck me as very wrong!\u00a0 If my path to eternal life has nothing to do with the choices I make then why am I making any good choices at all?\u00a0 He said that it is by the Grace of God alone that we enter the kingdom of heaven.\u00a0 Infact he told us that a sinner, one who has avoided God all his life, can be saved by asking for forgiveness in the end, at that last moment.\u00a0 Which is infuriorating for those of us who try day in and day out\u00a0not to sin.\u00a0 This priest made a very good point though he said, although the sinner, who made all the wrong choices in life by partying and being\u00a0hedonestic with his existence, although that seems like fun he sufferred from not having had a realationship with God.\u00a0 Yes, to some it seems unfair that we do the difficult task of trying to do right when it would be so much easier and fun to do wrong. However, we listen to God and therefore know God and that in and of itself is the greatest pleasure known to humanity.\u00a0 To know God is to be filled with His love and grace and there is no better life than that<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0 So even if we are good and try hard to be better it’s still not our choice to go to Heaven.\u00a0 It is all by the grace of God.\u00a0 Wow!\u00a0 What a way to make us believe we really have no control, it is all in God’s hands.\u00a0 How far off are those keys to the kingdom?\u00a0 We don’t even get to touch them.<\/p>\n

After hearing this priest talk about heaven I really reflected on it all.\u00a0 All we can do is the best we can do. We should\u00a0still try to follow the example of Jesus Christ in our everyday life. We should still try to develop a deeper relationship with God.\u00a0 We should still discern the gifts we have been graced with by God and give them back to the world around us.\u00a0 Then one day when we stand at the door with the keys to the kingdom in the lock at least we will know that there is nothing else we could have done differently.\u00a0 We will know when we have passed on to the next life and are standing at the door holding turning the key if the door swings open wide it will be by the Grace of God that we enter the TRUE KINGDOM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How far off do the keys to the kingdom appear\u00a0to you right now?\u00a0 Are you dwarfed by how far out of reach those keys are?\u00a0 What do you perceive to be the kingdom on the other side of that door?\u00a0 Will it be the success all we Americans strive for; untold wealth, lots of material possessions or the\u00a0 CEO position of your company?\u00a0 Is the kingdom actually heaven, eternal life?\u00a0 What do you define as your kingdom?\u00a0 What are your goals in life and the after life? Where do we get the keys?\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[183,69,202,361],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/faithfilledmom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/faithfilledmom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/faithfilledmom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faithfilledmom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faithfilledmom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/faithfilledmom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faithfilledmom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/faithfilledmom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faithfilledmom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/faithfilledmom.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}