FIND THE THREAD
Thus says the
Lord:
If you remove from
your midst oppression, false accusations and malicious speech;
If you give bread to
the hungry and help the afflicted; then light shall rise for you in the dark,
and the gloom shall become as mid-day.
The Lord will guide
you always and give you plenty even on parched land.
He will renew your
strength, and you shall be like a garden with a spring that never fails. Isaiah
58:9b-14
Approximately 800 years before Jesus was born, Isaiah’s words
were written. Since the days of Abraham,
God has encouraged us to love, to fight against anger and jealousy and all the
other emotions that separate us from the happiness God wants for us. In the quotation above, it would be easy to
misunderstand what God is saying. The
words, light shall rise for you in the
dark, and gloom shall become as mid-day and the Lord will give you plenty even
on parched land, are not meant to be taken literally. The gloom and the parched land referred to
are within us. They are the state our
souls get in when we give in to anger and jealousy and grudges, not to mention
the temptations that abound.
Many people take the promises in Scripture literally and
naturally become disillusioned when the promised spring that never fails doesn’t materialize. Jesus whole ministry was bent on clearing up
this misunderstanding. By his every
action, by his words and gentle goodness, he presented God to us. The spring
that never fails is the grace of God that flourishes in the world. The messages of Isaiah and Jesus are that
trust in God is the source of that grace.
Sometimes it means hanging on by the skin of your teeth, but it is worth
the effort.
There is no promise of a perfect life with no troubles, no
grief, no fear, but a promise that when we trust in God we will find the
strength to withstand those things. When
you read the life of Father Solanus, you see a person who was not well treated,
who could easily have become discouraged and angry, but the thread of Grace
within sustained him and his example of peaceful acceptance is what has drawn
people to him. Was he some kind of
super-human who could do that? Not
really. God has been calling out to us
for thousands of years to trust Him. Fr. Solanus did that. Why in the world do we keep resisting? Each of us must answer for ourselves.
Blessings,
Carol Lemelin OPA
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