“And the Lord said, ‘Hear my words if there is a prophet among you, I the Lord make myself known to him in a vision, I speak with him in a dream.”
In all the moments of our life and time, God calls us to grow in love in some way. During this Lenten season, I once again asked myself what the Lord asks of me, to abstain from or grow in or like the blind man, open my eyes to see. So that I may see Him more clearly and become my truer self in my soul. As humans, we can be a resistant lot. We can push against the things that need to change in us. It is a natural thing in us. It is so natural that we can live a lifetime and not ever think we needed to change. This baffles me many times, as I, although fallible, feel I am constantly trying to grow in love and make pure my soul to ultimately draw closer to God, so that I may see whom He has intended me to be. So that I may live as he would want me to live. A purposeful life in Christ. We can look at these ways in which God would want from us and see a cross and a crook.
I see the cross as the eternal life that Jesus offers each of us. We journey through Lent, I feel, not so much to rebelieve what happened many centuries ago, but to allow us to change deeper. To grow in love of Him and one another. To allow us to live more deeply. To allow us to make clean our soul and make our hearts pure. To have a pure and loving spirit is a most beautiful goal for me. One that I will journey for all my life. The cross reminds us, we are the beloved. We forget that at times. Every single soul is of utmost importance to God. Try as we might to think that others around us can offer something even remotely near to what God gives, is a misunderstanding to the fullest degree. In the scripture today, Miriam and Aaron, the sibling of Moses, speak against his Moses’ wife, the Cushite woman. In doing so, God is greatly angered and Miriam become leprous. It gave me great pause, to relate this to the happenings in my life. I look to what has passed, and what is and see the times where I could have responded more with God’s will for me and His love, but I chose a desire in me that was, as St. Ignatius calls, “disordered”. I also look on all the times where I stood for justice and love against another being hurt or falsely accused and instead showed love and chose a desire to live in an “ordered” way as St. Ignatius believed. The beauty of the story, of the cross of Miriam, and all of us is, that this isn’t the end of the story.
Then comes the crook of the staff, that is held by the man who gave His life for us. He wants that during this Lent and beyond to come and sit with Him at the foot of the cross. The story continues and Aaron goes to Moses and says to Moses, “Oh, my Lord, do not punish us because we have done foolishly and have sinned.” and asks Him to pray for Miriam to be healed and Moses does, “Heal her, O God, I beg you.”. The beauty then becomes, she is healed after seven days. The beauty grows immensely in three being reunited in a deeper more spiritual way. The cross can make us suffer, but the crook of His staff can lead us through the valleys of all darkness, we need not fear any evil. This is something I remind myself of, constantly. God makes good of all sin. This is how we are cleansed and are created anew. If our sin wants to pull us down, fight against it and know God will raise us up.
May God work in your life in amazing ways of love. Amen.
What does the Lord ask of you this Lent? How can you grow in unconditional and sacrificial love?
Peace and prayers,
Clauda
OurNourishedSoul