Give Glory to the Lord!
“Give ear, listen humbly,
for the Lord speaks.
Give glory to the Lord, your God,
before it grows dark;
Before your feet stumble
on darkening mountains;
Before the light you look for turns to darkness,
changes into black clouds.
If you do not listen to this in your pride,
I will weep in secret many tears;
my eyes will run with tears
for the Lord’s flock led away to exile.”
Jeremiah 13:15-17
This is entitled “the last warning”. Jeremiah is trying to tell his people to listen to God, but as usual they had no real intention of listening to him. For us, I would like to think it can be a rallying cry to prepare for the intensity of the upcoming weeks. We are coming ever closer to Holy Week and I think it is a good time to assess whether we have devoted ourselves to deepening our relationship with Jesus or not.To some extent, for me, living in everyday society can feel a bit like I am in exile. Most people seem to be unaffected by the state of things, unwilling to connect the dots to get to the heart of the matter. For many, social justice instead of being the very heart of Jesus’s mission, is termed something for bleeding hearts. Was Jesus a bleeding heart? Is that to say, living with intention is actually being a bleeding heart?Like Jeremiah, I feel like I “weep in secret many tears”. I know I am not alone, I know that there are many who get the big picture, but I worry about us. His flock. The people who enjoy a watered down sense of Christianity. Christian lite. What if suddenly there were no light? Only darkness and clouds? What would we do. We have come to rely on Jesus never letting us down, always forgiving and never asking more of us that we forget that it isn’t that he asks more, it is that the deeper we get into the heart of Jesus the more in touch with the Fathers will we become.Which takes me back to Christian lite. If we forever stay in a static state with our Lord, then we never have to know the will of God. Makes our lives much easier…indeed. We can convince ourselves it is good enough.
What do I know, maybe it is! But I just hope that as a society, (and wouldn’t it be great for Catholics to take the lead!) we turned and really gave glory to God.I speak to myself as I write these words…what can I do? How can I glorify God? How can I get deeper into the heart of Jesus so I can hear the will of my Father? These are not easy questions…but they are necessary to ask.I raise my heart in prayerful thanksgiving to God who calls me closer to him. I ask for the humility to listen and to hear him. I ask God to keep bringing me back to the questions, “what can I do to bring Glory to God?” I decide not to take Jesus’s love and sacrifice for granted.
