Lent - Day 34

       Can you imagine someone deciding for you that you are going to be a concert pianist? Perhaps that's a bit much. Perhaps a more likely scenario is your parents making a decision for you, like what you are going to be 'when you grow up'. The question is ultimately whose will is going to prevail. Whose choice is it anyway? 

      Another example of this might be left handed people. For many years that minority was  looked at as if they should be corrected. Nuns in schools forced those few unlucky souls to succumb to the pressure and somehow 'become' right handed. I believe there was even a belief that left handed people were 'of satan'.  Again I would ask though, who were those nuns to decide? 

       This Lent, as always I try to promote our self assessment and try to be the person that God created us to be, uniquely styled and fabulous in our own ways. To be fully human and to be the person God created you to be is a lifelong goal. We receive prompts and interests as to who we are and the lament of many has been to 'find themselves'. Quite often we are not given the opportunity to find out just who we are. Those nuns I mentioned did not help in that case. Parents too have an incredible amount of sway in decision that can affect a person for their entire lives.

         I have often noted that when God wants us to do something She will tap you on the shoulder in one manner or another. That 'do something' also refers to the creation of who you are. It is an awesome discovery, and a challenge perhaps, but so life fulfilling, so joyous and invariably a celebration of God alive in our life and in our world. I also add that when we do not comply with God's request, She often returns to tap you on the shoulder again - this time with a baseball bat or 2x4. God wants us to be fully, the creation of Her vision from our conception in Her mind ( and on through pregnancy, birth and a full life ).

         Respecting and revelling in who we are is not arrogance. Honouring the creation we are, respecting who we are and celebrating who we are can be a glorious road of discovery and celebration. It is arrogant and sinful to not honour and live out the joyous creation we are. We are all fabulous! I thought of this particularly the other day at a pride event I attended with my husband.  It was a joyous celebration of who we are as God created us. In that sense it was like a holy moment, a thin space too. People revelling in their being. 

        To have navigated the course to find out and cooperate with being a pianist, a botanist, a mathematician, a non-binary person, a gay person, a monk or musician, it is all for the glory of God in Her created world. It is a diverse and spectacular world, perhaps more so it seems when we have to unravel the mystery of who we are and get all pruny in it.

       For diversity and celebrations of who we are, we give thanks and pray.

Romans 9:19-33

 You will say to me then, ‘Why then does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?’ But who indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God? Will what is moulded say to the one who moulds it, ‘Why have you made me like this?’ Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one object for special use and another for ordinary use?What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the objects of wrath that are made for destruction; and what if he has done so in order to make known the riches of his glory for the objects of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— including us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? As indeed he says in Hosea,
‘Those who were not my people I will call “my people”,
   and her who was not beloved I will call “beloved”. ’ 
‘And in the very place where it was said to them, “You are not my people”,
   there they shall be called children of the living God.’

 And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, ‘Though the number of the children of Israel were like the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved; for the Lord will execute his sentence on the earth quickly and decisively.’ And as Isaiah predicted,
‘If the Lord of hosts had not left survivors to us,
   we would have fared like Sodom
   and been made like Gomorrah.’

 What then are we to say? Gentiles, who did not strive for righteousness, have attained it, that is, righteousness through faith; but Israel, who did strive for the righteousness that is based on the law, did not succeed in fulfilling that law. Why not? Because they did not strive for it on the basis of faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling-stone, as it is written,
‘See, I am laying in Zion a stone that will make people stumble, a rock that will make them fall,
   and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.’