Thursday after Ash Wednesday
February 15, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/021524.cfm

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Choose life, then,
that you and your descendants may live, by loving the LORD, your God,
heeding his voice, and holding fast to him.
For that will mean life for you,
a long life for you to live on the land that the LORD swore
he would give to your fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Deuteronomy 30:19-20

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The capacity to choose is a Divine gift that enables us to will our relationship with God. God desires the gift of our free choice to love Him.

What an act of divine courage for God to place hope in us! God does not demand our love. God waits for us to choose.

And God does not punish us if we choose otherwise. The choice is its own punishment because it is a rejection of the gift of divine life.

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Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

As we give thanks for the gift to choose, and for God’s desire for our love, we do so in the light of today’s Gospel. It clarifies the character of a sincere choice for Jesus Christ:

Then Jesus said to all,
“If anyone wishes to come after me, they must deny themselves
and take up the cross daily and follow me.
For those who wish to save their lives will lose them,
but those who lose their lives for my sake will save them.
What profit is there for us to gain the whole world
yet lose or forfeit ourselves?”

Luke 9:23-25

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Poetry: from Kahil Gibran

Do Not Love Half Lovers.
Do Not Entertain Half Friends.
Do Not Indulge in Works of the Half Talented.
Do Not Live Half a Life,
And Do Not Die a Half Death.

If You Choose Silence, 
Then Be Silent.
When You Speak,
Do So Until You Are Finished.
Do Not Silence Yourself to Say Something,
And Do Not Speak To Be Silent.

If You Accept, 
Then Express It Bluntly,
Do Not Mask It.
If You Refuse, 
Then Be Clear About It,
For an Ambiguous Refusal
Is But a Weak Acceptance.

Do Not Accept Half a Solution.
Do Not Believe Half-Truths.
Do Not Dream Half a Dream.
Do Not Fantasize About Half Hopes.

Half a Drink Will Not Quench Your Thirst
Half a Meal Will Not Satiate Your Hunger
Half the Way Will Get You Nowhere
Half An Idea Will Bear You No Results.

Your Other Half Is Not
The One You Love,
It is You in Another Time
Yet In the Same Space
It is You when You Are Not.

Half A Life Is a Life You Didn’t live,
A Word You Have Not Said,
A smile You Postponed,
A Love You Have Not Had,
A Friendship You Did Not Know.

To Reach And Not Arrive,
Work And Not Work,
Attend Only To Be Absent.
What Makes You A Stranger
To Them Closest To You
And They Strangers To You.

The Half Is a Mere Moment Of Inability,
But You Are Able,
For You Are Not Half a Being
You Are A Whole That Exists
To Live a Life
Not Half a Life.

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Music: I Choose God – Gospel Light Baptist Church