14 December 2018 - trust the music

St John of the Cross

Today's Readings (Audio)

I, the LORD, your God,
teach you what is for your good,
and lead you on the way you should go.

We harbor secret doubts that what the LORD commands is really for our good. Of course, we never say that out loud. We accept the commands and struggle to apply them in our lives. But all the while we undermine ourselves but not really believing that are meant for our benefit.

"To what shall I compare this generation? 
It is like children who sit in marketplaces and call to one another,
'We played the flute for you, but you did not dance,
we sang a dirge but you did not mourn.' 

We really want to preserve the status quo in our lives. We don't want to be called onward, upward, to higher places. But our call is an upward call (see Philippians 3:14). This means that we need to let our dancing and our mourning be brought into harmony by the flute and the dirge of God. Our desires and our actions are still not properly ordered and we need the music of God to order them.

Our sorrows are too selfish. Even our joys are too narrow. The LORD is calling us to a bigger world. It is good to value that which has value. It is bad to value that which does not really have value. We must learn to trust in the music of God. We must learn that what he is showing us is not for his benefit but for our own. His law exists not because he is arbitrary or cruel but because he wants us to live the best lives we can. His soundtrack for our lives is more fitting than the ones we try to impose.

He is like a tree
planted near running water,
That yields its fruit in due season,
and whose leaves never fade.
Whatever he does, prospers.

The LORD may be calling us to greater fasting or greater feasting at a given moment. But whichever it is, his calling is better than choosing either of them on our own apart from him. Let us listen. He is drawing us into a dance. 

But wisdom is vindicated by her works.