Seeking Wisdom

The reading from Exodus concerns the origin of Passover and it led me to two thoughts. 1. How often do we really make a conscious sacrifice to God, and are mindful of it in the doing? 2. How often do we recognize that some issue of our life is out of our control and ask God for help? On the first point I know for myself the last time would have been a couple of months ago but I’m really not even sure that qualifies. We were running gassers, a conditioning test that sounds as pleasant as it is and I was offering each rep as an intercession for my Uncle Jerry. (I stole that idea of intercessory effort from Matthew Kelly's Resisting Happiness ) But the last time I sacrificed something to God out of my own selfish comforts for the mere sake of glorifying God? I cannot recall. The last time I refused dessert, not because of any concern for my waistline but to say, “Here I will enter into the least suffering voluntarily, so as to better understand the Passion and grow i...

The Gospel reading for today is Matthew 11:28-30  Link to Daily Readings “Come to me all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” This sounds nice, but as soon as one starts to look into Jesus’s teachings it becomes quite clear that he does not mean the kind of rest we were envisioning. He compels us to a very strict morality and tireless labor for the good of others and the Kingdom. I think the kind of rest he means is almost unfamiliar to us, but we catch glimpses of it. It is not the rest of spending a day on the couch watching a tv marathon, doing absolutely nothing. For in that same passage Jesus says “my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” He makes no promises to free us from our work. Our rest will be from the work that drains us, that defeats who we are as humans. He will give us the work that strengthens, the work that pleases as it demands. I’d have to believe it’s not too uncommon of a feeling as I’ve had it before. But I think it is tha...

Today we have “Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” As well as “I have come to bring not peace but the sword… to set a man against his father…” Link to Daily Readings Them’s fightin’ words. At least I think they’re often interpreted that way. From picketers with signs that say “God hates [insert group]” to more subtle forms of altercation these readings can seem to reinforce this militant faith. I think I would describe a person of faith as a soldier, but the methodology of some people does not quite work. What I mean to say is that the spirit of militancy is not the problem, we are part of a great campaign to convert the world and bring people to God, but sometimes people fail to recognize methods that will actually work. I would be incredibly surprised if one homosexual person seriously questioned their sexual orientation after reading a “God hates [insert group]” sign at a protest. Have they had the...

Link to Daily Readings In the Gospel of Matthew today we hear the famous accusation by the Pharisees, “He drives out demons by the prince of demons.” Jesus’s response is one of the more famous parts of scripture, widely quoted by people as prominent as Abraham Lincoln when referring to whether the Union could continue as half-slave, half-free. The quote is actually not included in the reading from Matthew but the popular translation is “a house divided against itself, cannot stand.” The obvious meaning in the context of the story is that it would make no sense for Jesus to cast out demons if he served Satan as they would be his compatriots. But I think it’s not too difficult to see how we might delve deeper into the meaning of this statement. To be whole-hearted, sincere in one’s efforts, is sometimes a difficult thing to find in those around us or ourselves. We all have work we consider drudgery and thereby treat as drudgery. Part of what this passage calls us to is liv...

I don’t remember ever having terrible test anxiety, but I think until recently that’s only been because of practice. I just knew that if I didn’t do well, I’d be taking the test again. I took the ACT five or six times and the SAT three or four times. So, though it was a pretty unpleasant experience, just in terms of sitting still in a room working for four hours or something, it wasn’t too stressful. Mom usually took me out to a nice lunch after so it was all good. College exams are quite a bit different. They nearly always come after the drop without a W deadline, meaning you can’t get out without the withdrawal showing up on your transcript. I actually did withdraw before the W deadline once, which was for EECS 280 back when I thought I was going into computer science. But anyways, you generally can’t retake the exam, and unless you want to set yourself back on your progress in the degree you don’t want to drop any classes, especially if they’ll show up as a W. Furthermore,...

Link to Daily Readings “he [Jesus] said, ‘Go away! The girl is not dead but sleeping.’ And they ridiculed him.” How many times have we thought of a very faithful response to a question, but then remembered the kind of reception it would receive and rethought our response. We temper our testimony for fear of alienating our friends who we think do not want to hear about how our faith impacts our life. On the other hand, they probably see us and wonder why we bother with Church as it doesn’t seem to be doing us any good, at least not that they hear about. If we’re going to give effective testimony with our lives, we also need to explain it with our words. Surely if your friends see you doing terrible things and being ungenerous to the people in your life they probably won’t care to listen to you too much about how your faith improves you. But the almost always silent admiration you can gain from your peers when you’re being a particularly unselfish person can only be used to...

The first reading today speaks of Rebekah and Jacob’s deception of Isaac whereby Jacob receives Esau’s blessing, Genesis 27. Link For some reason this story reminded me of Jesus’s imperative to “let your yes mean yes and your no mean no.” I think it is because of how heavily the idea of a covenant plays in so many interactions in Genesis, with Abraham making his servant agree to never take Isaac from Canaan for a wife, God promising to Abraham that Ishmael will be safe and prosperous, and Isaac giving Jacob (or Esau) his blessing. There is this reverence for a promise that I think is substantially different in our culture today. But I don’t believe it’s unique to ancient Mesopotamia. I remember watching Last Kingdom and seeing the main character Uhtred continue to serve a man he hated for a country that was not his own, because he gave him his word. Perhaps it is a cultural shift in response to lifestyle and technological changes. When people can move so easily and frequently,...