Lent - Day 27

       One of things I have been praying about this particular Lenten season is to have some understanding ( if at all possible ) of the machinations of the world. Between lying politicians, dictators, wars, Brexit, laws that dictate public stoning, policies that deny science and a whole range of worldly human activities that I simply cannot grasp. That is, I totally disagree with and find a contradiction to faith and God's calling. 

       Two of the readings today as well as the holy person highlighted today,               ( Frederick Denison Maurice ), concern themselves with law and worldly concerns . We are after all physical beings. I am reminded though of my own thoughts, writings and knowledge that we are also spiritual beings. We have dual characters. Our job in Lent as in life, is t work with both and overcome the differences perhaps?  Jesus was quite capable of integrating the two living a fully human life and acknowledging to the full all that he is, human and divine.

        I am not sure I will ever fully understand the physical world and our human actions that seem to ignore our spiritual calling and character. Too often we seem to live 'in God's face', a way of life that demeans ourselves and our brothers and sisters, disrespects God's creations in us and the entire world.This may be the closest definition I can come to with my idea of 'social sin'. 

        Are we to ignore then the machinations of the world, sequester ourselves and our lives from the evils that we see?  While stepping aside or 'going to the mountain to pray' is an excellent way to listen and look inside ourselves, what is needed is the same thing the prodigal father indulged in. We must keep our focus on love. We are called to be part of the word but not of the world. We ( I ) need to embrace my faith in the power of love and witnessing to a starving world what answers lie in embracing love for all, love of God and love of self.

        For not understanding all that is going on but loving with reckless abandon in the name of God, we pray.  

Romans 7:1-12

Do you not know, brothers and sisters—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only during that person’s lifetime? Thus a married woman is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives; but if her husband dies, she is discharged from the law concerning the husband. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man, she is not an adulteress.

 In the same way, my friends, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God. While we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we are slaves not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.

 What then should we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’ But sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died, and the very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.For sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good.