25 Thursday Jan 2018
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On this feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, the thought comes to me that God can work with anyone to grant a behavioral turnaround. Granted that more serious situations demand more cataclysmic, Cecil B. De Mille-like solutions (as in Paul’s case) but it seems that God is willing to go to any extreme to bring us back from the precipice of destruction. A comforting and hope-filled thought, I’d say, when I am feeling less than saintly.
06 Tuesday Dec 2016
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comfort, destruction, Good Shepherd, Isaiah, meditation, power, real power, The Sophia Center for Spirituality
There is so much that I could learn from a serious study of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. Perhaps in my retirement…if such a time should ever come! Today’s reflection is simple – yet complex – coming from chapter 40:1-11. Isaiah’s message begins with tenderness. Comfort, give comfort to my people says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem…So begins what then sounds like destruction of all we know as life on this planet (All flesh is grass…withering…) in a show of force by a God that claims to come with power and rule by his strong arm. Immediately following on all of that comes, as conclusion, the promise that our God is rather like a shepherd. He feeds his flock; in his arms he gathers the lambs, carrying them in his bosom and leading the ewes with care.
What then is real power? Can we recognize it in the manifestations of God that stand in juxtaposition to the “power” of this world? Isaiah has much more to say about who God is and why but I would recommend these eleven verses as a worthy meditation for this feast of St. Nicholas.
26 Monday Sep 2016
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Blessed be the name of the Lord, Book of Job, challenges, destruction, distress, give, loss, suffering, take, thank God, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, trust in God, unwavering faith
When I read the text of the first reading from the Book of Job this morning (JB 1:6-22) I thought – as usual – that it sounds like the synopsis of a bad movie. Satan, vying with God, bets that Job won’t be as faithful as he has been if bad things happen to disturb his idyllic life of favor as God’s friend. God disagrees. After he hears all the terrible destruction that his servants come one after another to tell him about, we hear the familiar line that “I came into the world naked and will leave it naked. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Of course Job doesn’t say these words as declarative, emotionless sentences. He does wail and rend his garments…and this is only the first chapter of his test.
While it is clear to me that God does not bargain with evil, even on a sure bet, the Book of Job does make me think. I am always edified in conversations with people who have lost virtually everything in life or who have had horrendous experiences, when they make similar statements to Job’s, attesting to their ongoing faith in God. I wonder sometimes what I would be able to endure of suffering – I who often profess to have lived “a charmed life.” There have been challenges, to be sure, but my supports have been such that I never have cause to complain.
Today I shall think about Job and about all the people I have known who have met and survived incredible distress in unwavering faith – especially those like our Sisters in Japan who survived the atomic bombs of World War II, the man from Aleppo whose whole world was destroyed in seconds – including the loss of his four children and his wife, or all the people I have spoken of during this year who have been victims of weather events, who say when standing in the rubble of their town, “I thank God to be alive.” I don’t think we ever know the strength of our faith until it is tested, but I am urged by these thoughts to practice, in whatever ways I can, for a time when I might feel severely shaken and need to place my trust totally in the God who loves me more than I can imagine.
