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.