19 August 2016 - out to dry

[ Today's Readings ]

“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”
He said to him,
“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart,
with all your soul, and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”

Doesn't this read to us like obligation? How does our heart respond when we hear this? Doesn't it sound dry, heavy, and burdensome? Yet we read that "his commandments are not burdensome" (see John 5:3). It seems like when we try to put them into practice we are overcome by the world. Yet we read that "everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world" (see John 5:3). So why do we feel like such dry bones?

The LORD is the only one who can solve this problem. He is the only one who can give us life again. Even though our bodies are alive true life, life that overcomes the world, is born again of God. Without his Spirit living in us we are little more than bones ourselves. We do have his Spirit living in us by virtue of baptism and confirmation. But have we unleashed him in our lives? Have we fanned the flame? A litmus test for us today is the degree to see to what degree the commandments feel like obligation. And if we feel like, "How dry they were!" then let us turn to the LORD and hear his prophesy over us.

Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD!
Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones:
See! I will bring spirit into you, that you may come to life.

Already we can feel the life returning to us. We no longer feel weak and fragile but rather strong in the LORD.

From the four winds come, O spirit,
and breathe into these slain that they may come to life.
I prophesied as he told me, and the spirit came into them;
they came alive and stood upright, a vast army.

The LORD rescues us from the valley of death. He gives us life even in a world that seems to choke it. He empowers us to love when our human nature would simply find a burden.

And he led them by a direct way
to reach an inhabited city.

Once we ourselves are rescued and restored let us continue to listen to the voice of the LORD. He may be asking us to speak that same life to others.

O my people!
I will put my spirit in you that you may live,
and I will settle you upon your land;
thus you shall know that I am the LORD.