“Trample my courts no more! Bring me no more worthless offerings! Make justice your aim; redress the wronged, hear the orphan’s plea, defend the widow.” (Isaiah 1)
But here you are, putting your trust in deceitful words to your own loss! Are you to steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal, go after strange gods that you know not….? (Jeremiah 7)
“You have been told, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: only to do right, to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6)
Blessed are the poor in spirit, the kingdom of heaven is theirs….. what I say to you is: offer no resistance to injury. Love your enemies; pray for your persecutors. (Matthew 5)
The biblical prophets, both major and minor, and Jesus, Savior and Lord, were what today we might call revolutionaries. With their words and actions, they turned their worlds upside down and inside out. For those in their audiences who believed the more you possess the happier and more God-blessed you are and who relished the notice and praise they received from others, their words were stingers. And they stung hard.
In today’s culture of me, more me and a I’m working hard on a better me for me, their words can have the same effect. That is, if we are hearing them.
Life is not about me (or us). Those who make room for God and others – who put their trust in God, who show Godlike mercy and compassion to those in need around them – they are really the blessed ones. Conversely, those who put their trust elsewhere, and who make no room for other and THE OTHER in their lives, they have this moment and this moment only. No matter how “good it is” for them, what is now is “as good as it gets.” When hard times come, when praise from others is no longer showering down on them, and when their resources are all dried up, then they have nothing to draw from but their selves. And their empty self-s won’t satisfy for very long.
Thank God for us that God is for us … calling us to senses and to unity and reminding us of our callings.
For those who have God in their sights, no matter how good today is or is not, there is an even grander tomorrow. Toward that grander tomorrow, let us set our sights and let our feet follow. With St. Augustine, the great 4th century preacher and theologian, let us pray “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.”
Joe Lehman is the Senior Pastor at Our Lady of Nazareth Catholic Church, visit them on the web at www.oln-parish.org.
