Missing What Was Right in Front of Me
"I am going away and you will look for me, but you will die in your sins." - John 8:21
Today’s Gospel made me think about what it means to be searching for God, and still not recognize Him.
In John 8:5, the people referenced Moses when they brought an adulterous woman in front of Jesus. The law is something they understand. It gives structure, clarity, and a sense of order. I can see why they would expect God to operate that way, too – as someone who upholds and enforces what the law has written.
What stays with me in this passage is how close they were to Jesus, and still couldn't see Him for who He was, maybe because they were holding too tightly to a specific idea of God.
This Lenten season, I’ve noticed that I do the same when life gets too busy. Even in something as simple as going to Mass, I sometimes carry quiet expectations with me, thinking, “this priest is presiding, it might run long today”; small, passing thoughts that shape how I show up. I'm already somewhere else before I've arrived.
But as I sit there in mass, adrift in my own thoughts, my eyes always land on the cross.
Each time, I'm reminded of how the answer is already there, not in how long Mass is, or how abstract the homily is, or who is leading it, but in what the cross reveals: that Jesus so loved us, He gave Himself for us. Not just as a sacrifice, but as an example of what it means to live as God intended for us – in compassion.
Good Friday marked the end of a long work week with a teething baby for me. Attending church was the last thing on my mind. Though as we stood there in the back of the darkened church, watching the live stations of the cross, “lead me to the cross, as your love pours out” began playing. My eyes grazed by the cross in the center of the room, again realizing how often I can be looking past what is right in front of me.
Silently, I heard, “It’s okay, come as you are”.
Maybe dying in our sins is more about remaining closed – about not recognizing the kind of love that is right in front of us.
Mia Huynh