#71: The land of your enemies.

Do you imagine how your life would be, if you were captured by your enemies and sent to a strange land from where you could not return?

First you would lose your belongings. Your enemies would strip you away from them.  Once you were taken, what ever was left behind would be picked up by other people.  Even if you could somehow miraculously return, you would find nothing of what you own today.

Your enemies would make it impossible for you to maintain contact with family and friends.  As the days, weeks and years went by fewer people would remember you.  You would live friendless, surrounded only by those who hate you.

In that strange land, you would not even have the chance to use your talents, or practice your profession. Even communicating would be hard, for nobody would care about what you had to say. You would be treated as a prisoner or at best as a slave, forced to undertake the most humiliating of chores and unthinkable acts to delight your enemies.

Life in the land of your enemies would be existence without hope. A perpetual torture where you could not even decide when or how much to sleep.  There would be no one to exchange a kind gesture with.

The true land of your enemies is hell and your real enemies are demons.  I do not write this to scare you. I just want you to contemplate with clarity a place where you will never want to live.

Today's reflection is based on a passage from the book of Deuteronomy. The passage is found at Deut, 28, 47-68. Before you read I recommend that you pray to the Holy Spirit and ask for His light.

Points for reflection.

1. The Christian life is a life of joyful service to God and man, motivated by love. This service is the way to pay forward all the blessings of God. Over time we develop an ever closer relationship with God that allows us to perceive what we have received and the opportunities that each day we have to serve our neighbor.2. God has given much to you to help Him, however, if you live in a selfish manner and do not help, you will become useless, a waste of God's resources. Your soul will dry up and your defenses will be low against the enemies of the soul.3. Christ has bought us with His death on the cross so that we can have a happy eternal life. The damned in hell have no savior. Those condemned are just shadows and ashes of the human beings that they were. It is important to reflect upon and appreciate the sacrifice that Christ made for you to  correspond to such a huge gesture of love and not fall into the ranks of the apathetic and damned.
Let us pray to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of all saints, we too may one day join the choir of angels.

May God bless you abundantly.