Thursday after Ash Wednesday
As human beings, we don’t like suffering. For the most part our inclination is to avoid suffering. And yet it’s also part of our human experience and cannot be avoided. Sometimes we go to great lengths in attempting to avoid suffering. We try to avoid illness and harm to ourselves and loved ones and we try to prolong death and extend our lives as much as possible. Most of us, if given the choice each day, would choose life. Today’s readings talk about choosing life or death in a spiritual sense.
The first reading (Deuteronomy 30: 15-20) reminds us that if we love God, walk in God’s ways and keep God’s commandments, we will live. We are also cautioned that if “you turn away your hearts and will not listen, but are led astray and adore and serve other gods, I tell you now that you will certainly perish.” To this we might say, well I’m not adoring and serving other gods. But, then again, might we sometimes unintentionally serve the gods of youth and beauty, or wealth, power and status? What about the “gods” of addictions whether they be food, shopping, internet, drugs or alcohol? We can be fooled into believing that these things will bring satisfaction, when they really just bring more dissatisfaction and even anxiety or depression.
In today’s gospel reading (Luke 9: 22-25), Jesus again offers the opportunity to choose life. As followers of Jesus, we must deny our very selves, take up our cross daily and follow him. What are our crosses that we are to take up each day to follow Jesus? What does it mean for us as Christians today? I think it means that we are to deny/ let go of our false self, the selfish desires that can imprison us, and to take up the cross of forgiveness, justice, loving service, and compassion for others, especially those that we find difficult to like or love.
Jesus has shown us that the way of the cross is the way to real life, true freedom, inner peace and the joy of the resurrection. This is where we fully become the people that God has intended us to be.
In beautiful language the psalmist in today’s psalm (1: 1-4, 6) reminds us that the one who “follows not the counsel of the wicked nor walks in the way of sinners…but delights in the law of the Lord…is like a tree planted near running water, that yields its fruit in due season, and whose leaves never fade.” If we want to choose life, if we want to thrive like the tree in this psalm, we need to stay close to the source of life.
As we begin our Lenten journey, let us stay rooted in God’s word and in God’s love. Let’s choose life by daily picking up our cross along with Jesus, turning away from the false gods in our life and doing something, instead, to strengthen our connection with the true God, the Source of all Life.
Eileen Miller