Note: On Tuesdays and some Sundays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
The Gospels have many accounts of Pharisees, Sanhedrin, scribes, and others who just couldn’t see. They were learned people, people who studied the Torah as if their lives depended on it, but just 
couldn’t see how the prophecies were being fulfilled, right in front of them. Their lack of faith kept their eyes and ears closed.
Earlier this year, I heard a homily in which it was posited God is powerless without faith. I had trouble with that statement for quite a while. After all, if the Lord is all-powerful, how can something as seemingly small and intangible as our faith stop Him in His tracks?
I still haven’t come to a conclusion that I find completely satisfying, and maybe I never will. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe we really do prevent Him from working in our lives when we spend our time looking for what we think Jesus should be instead of accepting that He’s always there, all but begging us to have that tiny mustard seed of faith. We have before us the example of those who believed that nothing good ever came out of Nazareth, and that a man whose genealogy included kings and prostitutes, outsiders and adulterers and who preached forgiveness could not possibly be the Messiah. They couldn’t see what generations before them had longed for, had yearned for, had realized on their deathbeds that He wasn’t coming in their time, and probably offered a prayer that their descendants would recognize Him when He arrived. But many didn’t, despite the evidence. Many still don’t today. Let’s keep our eyes and ears open to His grace, so that we are not counted among them.
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