Matthew 9:14-15: Friendly Bonfires
Friday, February 10, 2023
In the U.S. we experience tumultuous political seasons with calls for and against political correctness. Today we continue the conversation about microaggression with an article from Atlantic Monthly. How do the ideas about microaggression, marginalization and victimhood relate to the Gospel? Are there friendly or un-friendly bonfires we may want to douse or fuel? Only our intimate conversations with God and others will reveal God’s truth to us.
Jesus: When you’re celebrating a wedding, you don’t skimp on the cake and wine. You feast. Later you may need to pull in your belt, but not now. No one throws cold water on a friendly bonfire.
God says: Do you know how often I have heard the familiar phrase that society is worse – or better – than ever? Your ideas are not new ones and when you study the histories of the peoples of the world you begin to understand this. I am always with you and yet you behave as if I have abandoned you. You need not be afraid. Believe me when I ask you to put out into deeper waters. Believe me when I tell you that fasting from food sharpens the senses. Fasting from the world for a little while sharpens the mind. But I am with you, rather than dampen the fires of love, let us call them into mighty conflagrations.
We explore these and like ideas as we remember our Lenten practice so that we might find wisdom and peace in God’s loving heart.
We take care to remember our practice for the week: Rather than thinking, “This will not work,” let us say instead, “If you say so, Lord”.
Tomorrow, the great banquet.
For an Atlantic Monthly article on microaggression, marginalization and victimhood, click on the image above or visit: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/readers-defend-the-rise-of-the-microaggressions-framework/405772/
The Noontimes 