Slowing down....
It's pIlgrim Tuesday...Allow me to Initiate a caring conversation with you...
How is your Lent journey going?
- Have you enjoyed a sense of growing closer to God?
- Is your heart getting softer and more open to His love?
- Have eternal values trumped temporary demands in your character growth?
To be brutally honest, my Lent Journey has been topsy turvy: the chaos monsters have been busy in my life and in the lives of those I care about. The pace has been relentless and complexity baffles me. I've been niggled with allergies and sinus - not badly sick, but enough to take the spring out of one's step.
When it gets like this, my default behaviour is to try harder.
I will push myself to do more, to read more, to pray harder, to pull myself together and to step up.
You know how that goes...
Our reading for today is one of the Psalms of Ascent which are songs for pilgrimage. In this psalm David talks about a weaned child...
An UNweaned child feels hungry and cries. You can't tell an unweaned child "hold on 5 minutes, supper's on the stove, it's nearly ready." Unweaned children cry because they don't yet understand that their parents are faithful. They believe that they have to make the food happen by their effort. So they cry and wave their arms and legs and wrinkle their faces. And they escalate!
Sometimes we're like unweaned children. We want peace and to be loved, but we think we have to work hard to get it...
Conversely, a weaned child has learned to trust Mom to provide a meal - even if it is not served immediately.
Oft times we are guilty of trying to be in control of our relationship with God. (Think about how nonsensical that is: us trying to be god over the Almighty.) But David warns us against this kind of pride.
We won't always be in complete control - we won't always have all the answers. We don't have to do all the talking and we don't have to understand everything. We have to grow up from being the insecure and demanding baby to the trusting child who has learned from experience that God is faithful.
Part of the Lent Journey includes slowing down, simplifying and coming to a place of saying: "I trust You Lord. I don't have all the details and I can't do it all. I don't know all the answers BUT I know that you love me and even when I am tempted to be frantic in my efforts to impress you, help me to know I am your child and help me to put my hope in You."
| My heart is not proud, O LORD, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. 2 But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. 3 O Israel, put your hope in the LORD both now and forevermore. (Psalms131:1-3) |
