Setting Us Straight

In today’s first reading,  Ezra 6: 7-8, 12, 14-20, the Jews, who  had returned to Jerusalem following their exile in Babylon, rebuild the Temple at God’s command and through the cooperation of the pagan king Cyrus and Darius, the encouragement of the prophets and financial help of the Persian empire.  There wasn’t separation of church and state back then.  All worked together to bring about the will of God for the good of the Chosen People, the People of God.  Today, as well, God uses everyone and everything as an instrument of His will, even those whom we might perceive as our enemy, as opposing our religion, as not endorsing our beliefs.  As Jesus says in today’s Gospel, Luke 8: 19-21,  those who do the will of His Father are brothers, sisters and mother to Him.

This morning, the Lord drew home to me that obedience to His will is what He asks of me, not my clinging to my schedule or to my morning routine.  Five minutes into my hour of prayer, the fire alarm blared through the building. All were escorted to one “safe” place.  Ten minutes later, thinking all was clear, I returned to chapel, only to be called back to the “safe” place for another 30 minutes.  My hour of prayer was, to say the least, disrupted and basically close to its conclusion. I am boiling inside when, all of a sudden, the Lord says to me in the quiet of my heart:  “My will for you this morning is to be respectful of procedures put in place to keep the residents of this facility safe and to let go of idolatrizing your scheduled routine.”  To say the least, I was humbled and grateful!

Be attentive today to how God communicates His will to you, through whom and through what circumstances of your life, and what structures you might have erected as your sacred idol?  A clue might be how strongly you react to something or someone. Behind that reaction, if you probe deeply enough, you might find that which you, too, need to let go of in submission to God’s holy will!