Psalm response: The Lord has revealed to the nations his saving power.

We might ask ourselves the same question that the disciples ask each other here, “What can He mean, 'Within a short time you will lose sight of Me'?”  The answer is clear for this context, but is there another meaning for us?  I think that there might be.  

When we come to know Jesus at first, to really know Him, we experience a warmth and a joy that sustains us in our faith, but with all our comings and goings we seem to lose sight of His constant presence.  We start to doubt His power and His love and can't seem to feel His hand guiding our lives.  But if we remain as faithful to God as we can, as willing to sacrifice our time as we are able, to exchange our confidence in ourselves for complete trust in Him instead, then we will see and experience Him in our lives again.

We are like children of about 11-13 months, who are able to crawl or toddle fairly actively and start exploring their world with great curiosity but who have extremely short attention spans.  Such children need to feel that Mom or Dad is around and will depend on being able to see him or her, but then their attention shifts to other matters until they suddenly realize that Mom or Dad has disappeared and they go into the next room to check on them – and then get distracted again.

Such are we, just the littlest of children, and we need to trust that God is always near us, always loving us, always encouraging us to grow whether we detect His presence or love or not.  Sometimes His seeming absence is the result of our neglect, our failure to pray and to seek Him out in other ways, but sometimes He also shows His care by teaching us to walk in faith – like a father letting go of a kid who is learning to ride a bicycle: we need to walk by that faith and to learn how to take responsibility for opening our spiritual lives to God's love, wisdom, and guidance.