God's Patience

Through Moses God had delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.  Not far into their desert journey the people complain bitterly to Moses and to God because they have no water (Exodus 17:1-7.)  Moses takes some of the elders and goes off to Mount Horeb (Sinai) where he strikes a rock with his staff and out comes water.  Presumably the water then flowed in a wadi (a dry stream bed) back to where the people had been grumbling, a place which gets the name "Testing" and "Dispute."

It's possible to be so annoyed at the people's griping that we fail to notice God's patient, constant care for them.  God is just as patient and caring with us as individuals and as a nation when we complain about God's not giving us what we want.

Living Water

Heavy mid-March snow this morning!

When Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well, he offered her "living water." (John 4:5-42)  At a time when many wells were simply cisterns of flat water drained from the surface, a well with fresh, flowing water was much prized.  Jesus meets the woman at a well of "living water."  The living water that Jesus offers her and us is his own life within us constantly bubbling up like a fountain.  A genuine prize!

As We Forgive

A break in today's snow.

What a terrifying prayer: "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."  Just how terrible was underlined for me today in a passage from the Book of Sirach (28:2-5) quoted in Give Us This Day: Daily Prayer for Today's Catholic:

Forgive your neighbor the wrong done to you;

then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven. 

Does anyone nourish anger against another,

and expect healing from the Lord? 

Leaving Home

Recently a writer in a nationally known newspaper opined that the answer to poverty in Appalachia was for the people to go and live in a city where they could get work!  In a country where the majority of the population is so mobile, it's hard for a stranger to understand that we have deep roots in these hills.

Abraham and his family, in a time when travel was extremely difficult and rare, were even more rooted to their own land.  How terrible, then, was God's call to him: "Go forth from your land and your birthplace and your father's house to the land I will show you. (Genesis 12:1 in Robert Alter's fine translation)"  Yet Abraham left.  We ask him to pray for the refugees of our time who have left their homeland forever. 

Divinity Is Always There

Divinity was always there, but---

now they saw It shining out of their Beloved

then I saw It shining in rising sun's rays
across high mountain meadow

 suddenly I saw It shining in her descent of post office steps

this day I saw It shining through early morning fog

 another I saw It shining in crystal ice on bare tree limbs

quick I saw It shining as I swam into the sun
 that day I saw It shining on an aged peace-filled face

Prayer

God's breath in man returning to his birth

Heart in pilgrimage

Reversed thunder

A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear

Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss

Heaven in ordinary

The milky way

Church-bells beyond the stars heard

The land of spices; something understood

In his poem "Prayer," George Herbert simply piles us images of prayer.  These are some that helped me pray this morning.  I especially like the first which helped me think of the Holy Spirit in us returning us to God. 

Desert Contemplation

Except for the power line, this is what the desert may have looked like that Jesus went to after his baptism by John in the Jordan.  This scene is just up the mountain from the Jordan River.  The temptations get all the attention, but surely Jesus didn't go there to be tempted.  In the desert he could be totally alone with God in preparation for his life's work.

We can create our own desert during Lent, a place and a time, where we can be alone with God.