SWIMMING UPSTREAM
The daily
readings lately have been about Moses and the Exodus. Talk about swimming upstream! Moses who had it all at one time, put it all
behind him and set out to free his people and return them to their homeland,
which they hadn’t seen in many centuries.
He faced one obstacle after another not the least of which was the
attitudes of the people he was trying to lead.
No matter how hard Moses tried to make the journey possible they
complained and rebelled. They were
hungry, so at Moses’ request, God supplied Manna to eat. Then they complained there were no
cheeseburgers! Well maybe not
cheeseburgers but you know the story. At
that point, Moses said, to God:
“I cannot
carry all these people by myself,
for
they are too heavy for me.
If
this is the way you will deal with me,
then
please do me the favor of killing me at once,
so
that I need no longer face this distress.” (NM 11:15 )
Who
among us has not had that thought? We
swim upstream a lot more than we would like but such is life. No one wants to do it but there are times
when we are called to do it. As Christians we are called to speak for peace and
justice. We are called to stand up for
the poor, for those who voices are weak, for those who don’t know how to stand
up for themselves. We are called to
stand up for Christian principles. Not
the fake kind, the kind that seeks to discriminate using the Bible as a
weapon. We are called to speak for the
rights of all individuals to live and prosper because we are all the children
of God. We must stand strong in the face
of opposition, which will be louder and more violent. Our examples are Paul, Peter, St. Catherine
of Sienna, St. Maximilian Kolbe, Medgar Evers, Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa,
and Pope Francis to name a paltry few of the millions who have swum upstream to
remind everyone to follow the call of Jesus to love one another. We can’t hide
behind fear or discomfort or shyness, we have to say the words.
With love, Carol
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