Sirach 30:14-25: Health of Body and Soul
Saturday, November 23, 2019
There are so many ways to be joyful, and the list which Jesus Ben Sirach imparts to us today is worthy of our time. I like the way the writer juxtaposes bitterness with joy, cheerfulness with brooding, courage with resentment, good health with a wasted frame. Verse 20 is particularly interesting as we may know people who are determined to be sad. Verse 25 is also fun – especially when we look ahead at 31:12-31 and 32:1-13, table etiquette.
Cheerful hospitality is a hallmark of Gospel living. Offering of hearth and family are a sign of our willingness to be open and vulnerable to God through those whom he sends to enter our homes and our sacred places of the heart. For the hearth of the family and the heart of the individual – these are the places where God dwells, where the Holy Spirit abides . . . and it is for this reason that we must seek composure of the heart.
Contentment of spirit, writes Sirach, better this than precious coral.
God wants us to be happy and to revel in our happiness. God wishes us well, urges us to live cheerfully, to let him take on our worries and anxieties. Through discipline, through doing well and doing right, through acting with mercy and justice . . . this is how we reach true contentment, true softening . . . and composure of the heart.
The words of Sirach remind us well of this.
Written on January 23, 2008 and posted today as a Favorite.
Image from: http://moochuk.com/index.php?showimage=328
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