Pondering for Friday, July 10, 2020

Daily Office Readings for Friday of proper 9: Year 2

Psalm 16, 17; Deut. 31:7-13,24-32:4; Rom 10:1-13; Matt. 24:15-31                         

“Brothers and sisters,my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. I can testify that they have a zeal for God, but it is not enlightened.  For, being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own, they have not submitted to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.”  (Romans 10: 1 – 4)

Let me just cut to the chase right now.  This is about letting go and letting God.  Paul, in this Letter to the Church in Rome, speaks from firsthand experience.  He knows about zeal and being ignorant of the righteousness of God.  Remember, he was on the road to Damascus when he had his encounter with our Lord Jesus who redirected his zeal and informed his ignorance.

Today many of us still put God in our own small box where we personally decide what God wants.  We have falsely declared that God created some people inferior to others.  We have falsely declared that God does not like gay people.  We have falsely declared that God intends for men to rule over women.  The small box that some of us have put God in, favors the box holder and prevents the box holder from seeing the real God. Such folk “have not submitted to God’s righteousness.”

Jesus was, and is, all about doing what he sees the Father doing. As he says in the Gospel of John, “I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I seek to do not my own will but the will of him who sent me.”  (John 5:30)  All of the real leaders of faith put themselves out of the way so that God could do the real work of healing and reconciling.  From Moses leading the Israelites, to John the Baptist baptizing and announcing the coming of the Messiah, they let go and let God.  It was not that these men were trying to be famous.  But rather, it was their getting out of the way, so that God could do the Holy work that was needed.

With what apostolic success is God trying to accomplish through you?  Can you, like Moses, and John the Baptist, and Paul, get out of the way and let your zeal to do what God wants, be used for the righteousness of God? Can you let go and let God?

Let us hear what the Spirit is saying to and through the saints of God and then ponder anew what the Almighty can do.  John