2 Samuel 13: Seeking Intimacy
Sunday, July 14, 2019
Desire, love, lust. Lashing back in hurt and surprise, angry retaliation, calculated revenge. Family relations churn and twist as we read this story which is similar and yet different from the stories of Bathsheba and Dinah, as the HARPER COLLINS COMMENTARY points out. Family values and family sickness shatter human lives as these people roil in deceit and turmoil. David, the father, king and leader, does nothing . . . can do nothing . . . but watch as his family self destructs – for he himself is culpable. As the commentary states: David’s hands are tied because his sons are merely mimicking his own sick behavior. These people seek intimacy with one another and with God . . . and do not find it . . . because they look in the wrong place. True intimacy lies in the process, in the journey, in the progress of the soul.
From today’s MAGNIFICAT:
There are two messages today: first, we have to hold on to absolute responsibility for real order and commitment to the Lord God. Second, the fundamental character of life is a true waiting, hard for Occidentals to comprehend, especially for modern people. Life means waiting, not Faust-like grasping, but waiting and being ready. We are waiting for the terror of the night, and waiting for the day when this terror will have passed. “The people will languish from fearful expectation”. Anyone who remains stuck, waiting in fearful expectation just to see whether or not he will survive, has not yet laid bare the innermost strata. For the fearful expectation was sent to us in order to remove our false sense of security and behind it is this other metaphysical waiting that is part of existence. Man is always in danger of rooting himself, of running aground. Over and over again, life will shake anyone who waits in that way, in order to make him hurry out to meet what is coming. Then what vitality he has been given will come to life. Then he will feel that life goes above and beyond individual lives. Only in this way will he be truly human, by living above and beyond himself, waiting for the final reality. That is the reason for this striving and seeking further and knowing it will one day come: to wait until the lights flare up.
We have more expectation than earth can grant, because what we encounter in only a piece of reality, a piece of creation. We are waiting for the fulfillment of a promise: You will one day possess all this because God, as God, is himself reality, realness, and intimacy.
Father Alfred Delp, S.J. – condemned to death in Germany in 1945
If we might only think about the dual choice that faces us daily – complaining or rejoicing.
If we might only seek what is best for us today – our singular selves or our unity with God.
If we might only become one with God today . . . and all days . . . how much better we might see God’s creation and our place in it.
For some beautiful images of God’s creation in the Canadian Rockies visit Patrick Latter’s Photography blog at: http://hikingphoto.com/ or click on the image above.
Cameron, Peter John, Rev., ed. “Meditation for the Day.” MAGNIFICAT. 1 July 2008. Print.
Mays, James L., ed. HARPERCOLLINS BIBLE COMMENTARY. New York, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1988. 270-271. Print.
Image from: http://hikingphoto.com/
The Noontimes 