A reflection on the Daily Lectionary readings for February 5. Please see the Daily page for tools to help you make daily prayer and scripture part of your rhythm.
(Psalm 112:1-9, Deuteronomy 4:1-14, 1 John 5:1-5)
What is it to be fully human and to live fully? This seems to be the looming question throughout the history of humans. But it’s a question to which God has always given us the answer plainly. In our faith stories of God creating humans to walk with God in the garden, God has made it clear that is what we are made for – to be with God, to walk with God, to learn from God what it is to love and tend to each other’s needs. God never made this a secret nor a message given in code.
Throughout our faith stories we are told over and over how God’s people thrive when we trust God’s wisdom of what is good and what is evil and how we struggle when we don’t. And because we are human, we still get it wrong more than we get it right. And here’s the good news – God loves us. Not it spite of our humanness but because of it. God gave us the freewill to choose God’s Way or our own way of navigating life knowing we’d miss use it. And God loves us. And God will never stop loving us or wanting to be with us.
God spoke through Moses to the people God had freed from slavery in Egypt saying, listen, pay attention, to what I’m telling you about how to navigate this life: “Just make sure you stay alert. Keep close watch over yourselves. Don’t forget anything of what you’ve seen. Don’t let your heart wander off” (Deut. 4:9, The Message).
Keeping our hearts, the core of who and Whose we are, our identity, oriented to God our Loving Creator, is what helps us get it right. It’s not about having a perfect checklist of dos and don’ts but about living in the wisdom that life is about our relationships with God, with each other, and with ourselves. Some fifteen hundred (más o menos) years after Moses, the Apostle John reminds us that “the proof that we love God comes when we keep his commandments and they are not all that troublesome” (1 John 5:3, The Message).
I don’t know why we struggle so much as the human race to get it. I do know that this struggle is part of who we are as humans, part of who God made us to be. And throughout history there have been people who have done what they can to remind us of who we are made to be: from the ancient prophets to Jesus to the earliest of Jesus’ followers to more modern voices like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Jimmy Carter, and so many others. It’s never been a secret. It’s not ‘all that troublesome’ (gotta love Peterson’s turn of phrase in The Message). It isn’t easy. It is love and love is what we are made for.
Together and with God’s help we can remember who and Whose we are: God’s beloved children. Together and with God’s help we can have the eyes to see the image of God in every person we encounter. Together and with God’s help we can have the ears to hear the pain and suffering that we inflict on others (and ourselves) when we let our hearts wander away from God, when we deicide we know better than God what is good and what is evil, when we choose to build our own kingdoms rather than live in God’s Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven. Together and with God’s help we can be who God is always calling us to be.
Together and with God’s help we can love louder than the hate in this world.
Mother Nancy's Coffee Thoughts 