RETREAT IN LENT 2021
Day 22,
Wednesday, 10 March
‘Do not
let these things slip from your heart.’
At this
stage in Lent there is a reminder of the covenant between God and his people
forged in the desert (Deuteronomy 4:1, 5-9). The covenant, like a book
of instructions for a new tool, lays down what to do. If you follow the
instructions things will work and you will be happy. If you don’t read the
instructions, or ignore them, you will proceed by guessing and you may damage
the tool and things may fall apart and you won’t be happy.
The
instructions in the desert were basic but they were a foundation. Jesus says in
Matthew (5:17-19), ‘build on them’ as a teenager builds on her or his
primary education. The point here is about freedom. Freedom is not about doing
what I like without any reference to others or to the real world, for example,
of medicine. Freedom is about choosing what is life-giving for me and for
others and this immediately imposes limits.
If I want to
irrigate a field, I can’t just empty a tanker of water on it; it will only
reach a small part of the field and the rest will run off and be wasted. No, I
have to direct (limit) the water to pipes or channels so that the whole field
feels the moisture and receives life from it.
So it is
with the ‘new’ covenant given us by Jesus on another mountain (Matthew 5:
1-12). ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’ who choose to be free. They are not
slaves to money or power or property. They may have them but they do not dominate
their life. They are free. The Queen of England’s grandson and his wife felt
these things were crushing them and they have chosen to opt out. They have
chosen to be free.
So we look
at our choices. There are good choices and there are better choices. A poignant
example of this is given in Luke (10:38-42), where Martha makes a good and
necessary choice. But then Jesus tells her that Mary has made an even better
one!
‘Do not let
these things slip from your heart’ says Moses in the book quoted above.
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