Wednesday, August 4, 2021

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, we pray with Psalm 106 which mirrors the story told in our first reading from Numbers.

It takes some doing to pray with these passages, at least for me. On the surface, they offer us spies and wars and a vengeful God whom Moses has to placate – images that don’t speak to my spiritual life.

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But, as always with scripture, I ask if there is a meaning for me underneath that surface story? I found it in the word “breach”.

God is always trying to break through – to breach – the surface of our lives to teach us divine meaning. But we are often spiritually short-sighted like the spies who report back to Moses. We sometimes let our simplistic observations of life block us from its true depth and call.

But Moses, because of his unique relationship with God, has been cleared of those blockages. He opens up – breaches – the surface to help the people connect with God’s power.

What allows me to “breach” my limited understandings and to see all life as God, shining through experience? 

For me? Sweet silence. Faithful prayer. Reaching for the “dearest freshness” of an obedient heart and a resolute love.

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Poetry: God’s Grandeur- Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

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Music: from Freshness Green Soothing Relaxation