Friday, February 16, 2018
Reading: Psalm 25:1-10
Antiphon:
"All the paths of the
LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and
his decrees." (Psalm 25:10)
The psalmist
reminds us that there are many paths of God. But all of them exist within a
reciprocal relationship: God's steadfast love and our response - a promise to
live in the world as images of that love. This is the narrow way of Christ.
Just as God self-limits power out of love for creation, so we self-limit our
freedom out of love for God and all of God's creation. In Ursula LeGuin's
fantasy book The Wizard of Earthsea, a young Ged, mage-in-training, learns of
self-limitation:
The Master Summoner spoke softly and his eyes were somber
as he looked at Ged. "You thought, as a boy, that a mage is one who can do
anything. So I thought, once. So did we all. And the truth is that as a
person's real power grows and their knowledge widens, ever the way they can
follow grows narrower; until at last one chooses nothing, but does only and
wholly what one must do…"
In Lent, as in
life, we choose a narrow path of intention and discipline, exploring what it
means to live in God's steadfast love.
Teach us, O God, in the way
you would have us go. Amen
- · start a lenten journal; write even just a sentence, a thought, or a paragraph each day.
