Jesus taught that God isn’t waiting to wreak havoc on people who go astray, but there is an urgency to our lives, and we may have to change course to find the abundant life we were made for.
As we prayed Psalm 27 together this morning, the raw prayer of an individual became the raw prayer of our community. We all shared in prayer the deepest longing of our heart – to be in such intimate communion with God that we dare to seek the face of our Lord.
Over and again in the New Testament, we hear that we can’t disentangle what we believe about God from how we live with other people. In fact, we often learn what we really believe about God in the way we treat others.
We come to claim Ash Wednesday as the stand-in for the unknown anniversary of the day when the fires will go out and there are only ashes. We do this not out of a sense of gross morbid curiosity, not to wallow in dark fascinations, but as O’Donohue says “to gather ourselves / and decide carefully / how we now can live / the life we would love / to look back on…”
Jesus not only heals the son from his demon, he also works to heal the disciples and us from our addiction to knee-jerk reactions and quick fixes. He invites them and us into the slower and more fulfilling path of taking the time to listen to God and each other.