Last week we had a glimpse of the beauty of Zion and our call to live there, our Promised Land. However the journey from the slavery of ‘Egypt’ to the ‘Land of Milk and Honey’ isn’t necessarily an instantaneous one. Our human frailties still cling to the false charms of Egypt and therefore the pain of letting go is real.
God sends us through the ‘desert’ because He wants to develop complete faith and trust within us, He wants to show us that He can indeed feed us and provide for all of our needs. In this arid place, He tells us over and over that we need nothing and no one but Him. That our job is to do as He says, we are to care for those that He sends our way and then He’ll take it upon Himself to care for and feed us Himself. We are to stop ‘grabbing’ for self gratification and we are to relax in His provision instead. He promises us that we won’t ‘starve’. It’s counterintuitive to ‘let go’ at these moments so we do experience it as pain at first, or at least discomfort. This is the ‘sacrificial’ aspect of it. It’s the dying to self.
The way to do this is to change our focus. Untangle ourselves from selfishness. The evil spirit of Narcissism is consuming our society whole. We need to come to a realization that what feels good and comfortable at the moment isn’t always the best thing though, we need to push beyond our comfort zones. Fasting, abstinence and other methods of negating the body help develop self control and train us to look beyond our immediate world of the senses for truth, beauty and goodness. We often don’t even need to undertake extra harsh penances, because by simply doing what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, the opportunity to die to self will most likely come up several times during an average day.
We’re living in times of high sensitivity. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, if we use it wisely. Instead of getting personally worked up about perceived assaults against our own person, we are to use our sensitivity in determining the needs of others. For ourselves, we are to use our sensitivities to see our own faults, and the blessings that we’ve been undeservedly given and to be in tune to Grace and God’s calling moment by moment. This sensitivity should lead to a deep sense of gratitude and worship. It is this attitude that prepares us for receiving the Savior and all the graces that He wants to bless us with.
Last week I posted about living a life in the Spirit. However there is often much that gets in the way of us being able to do that. Spirits that bind us and hold us back from living the Life that we were created for. Our acts of disobedience, both big and small cause their own binding. We can instinctively feel that what we had sought as a way to satisfy the craving of our soul, has instead created a larger hole. We are now hungrier and more needy then ever. We feel raw and naked. We mean well, many of us are long time Christians and know enough to pray… but the prayers that we have memorized from childhood seem to fall on deaf ears. It may seem like we are making headway, but it’s always a few steps forward and many more steps backward. An awkward dance at best. But our eyes have been opened to our own guilt and shame sets in. The pain is too great so then we go back to our own devices… covering ourselves the best way we can. Adam and Even did it with leaves and loin cloths. We do it with whatever draws our attention at the moment. My own idol of choice is food. I’ve used it as a mode of control my entire life. At first I ran from it…quite literally actually. I was raised in another time and place and my mom’s worries for me were real. So force feeding was a viable option. I use that term loosely…she didn’t actually stuff food into my mouth…not that I can remember. But she’d do everything in her power to coax me. Even though the message was that if I didn’t eat I would die, I was fearless and still rebelled and would literally run off. As an adult, I have no one else to look out for me and to keep me alive anymore. So it was up to me to ‘parent’ myself the only way I knew. It really does seem like a struggle for survival. I don’t really binge, but what I do is just as detrimental.
God remains faithful and stable no matter our circumstances or feelings about it. We can feel confident in abandoning ourselves to His will. So be doers of the Word and don’t be satisfied with merely hearing it. This ‘relationship’ becomes a fruitive union, where we become more and more like Him, who is full of Glory and Majesty.
