Like Paul and the Philippians, we must be able to put the past in perspective and become a forward-looking people. Our very lives depend on it.
“It breaks the father’s heart that his own child thinks he has to justify himself at all. It breaks his heart that his child thinks a father’s joy and affection must be earned and that all the responsible son’s efforts at goodness over the years had been a kind of performance to do just that.”
One of the things that still catches me by surprise, though it shouldn’t by now, is opening the Bible and finding our daily news splashed across the surface in these old stories, if we have eyes to see them or ears to hear them.
For Jesus and for us, the expedient move is not always the right move. Temptation is usually a whisper to take a shortcut- a shortcut to pleasure, a shortcut to wealth, a shortcut to prestige. And it is an invitation to think short-term, without considering the consequences of our actions, or the infinite possibilities of thinking and acting with a mindset toward the eternal.
So, who are the Cora Potes and St. Pauls in your life? The people who will call the bluff of the conventions and inhibitions that keep us from the truth about ourselves and our world. People who will call out anyone, even Moses, if that’s what it takes to name the veils the world gives us to walk around underneath.