Monday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time
I recently spent a long weekend with my 10 month old granddaughter. Every blessed second she is awake she is exploring, interacting, hugging, and expressing joy. It is impossible not to be focused on the present moment with a baby this age. Outside of feeding her, keeping her clean and warm, and settling her to sleep this little girl is completely content and wants for nothing. Such sweet simplicity!! I think the answers to some of life’s most baffling questions can be realized just by observing babies.
In today’s reading from the book of Galatians, we hear St. Paul speaking very sternly to his community. Paul’s letter is in response to the Galatians being persuaded by outsiders that they must adhere to Mosaic law. Reinforcing his earlier teachings and reassuring them of his authority through Christ, Paul urges the Galatians to remember through Whom they received their freedom: “For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.” Jesus, not following the dictates of the law, is what set them free and granted them eternal salvation. Being tempted away from faith in Jesus Christ, relying instead on laws or self-sufficiency sounds all too familiar. I see it in myself and in those around me; such is human weakness. What I find myself having to learn over and over again is that life is so much more complicated, stressful, and lacking in peace when I wander down that road. “We are children, not of the slave woman, but of the freeborn woman.”
I am quite simply a child of God. I have been ransomed, set free, and adopted into the Kingdom of God through Jesus’ Cross, Death, and Resurrection. I am a child of the Promise. And still, I fail to completely claim this.
The journey to God is a journey of change, of release, of shedding what we have acquired in our life. It is a journey of both letting go of lots of accumulated ‘stuff’ and desperately seeking something more—this turns out to be God. What could be simpler than this? And while the simplicity of Christian maturity may not look exactly like my baby girl, I have no doubt she will continue teach me more than a couple things about keeping things sweet and simple.
--Gail Lyman