If…

Saturday after Ash Wednesday
February 17, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/021724.cfm


Thus says the LORD:
If you remove from your midst oppression,
false accusation and malicious speech;
If you bestow your bread on the hungry
and satisfy the afflicted;
Then light shall rise for you in the darkness,
and the gloom shall become for you like midday;
Then the LORD will guide you always
and give you plenty even on the parched land.

Isaiah 58:9-11

So many critical aspects of our lives hinge on the word “If”!

  • If not
  • If so
  • If only
  • If I had
  • If I hadn’t
  • If just

That critical “if” reminds us that all life is about relationship. It is about how we and the one with whom we are in relationship respond to each other. It is about choosing and deciding. And remember, as one of my early favorite theologians famous said:

Not to decide is to decide.

Harvey Cox in “On Not Leaving It To the Snake”

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy:

We are in constant relationship with God Whose Breath is the source of our life. Our life should be an act of reverence for that gift, responding always to God’s hope for us. Isaiah puts some of those hopes into words for us today. In our prayer, we might hear God whisper special “ifs” to us as we open our life and heart before God’s love and mercy.


Poetry: If by Rudyard Kipling

I know this poem came to your mind as soon as you saw today’s picture – right? Well, here it is.


If you can keep your head when all about you   
   Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
   But make allowance for their doubting too;   
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;   
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
   If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
   With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   
   And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
and you will be a Woman, precious one! (my addition, I think Rudyard would be grateful))

Music: Whispering Sea – Tony O’Connor

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