Saturday, February 23, 2020
Sirach 8 & 9 – Part I
Staying Within our Means
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We have been visiting with the Book of Sirach all week. Today and tomorrow we will want to spend time with Chapters 8 and 9 and think about how we spend our fiscal, physical and spiritual cash. We will want to ask ourselves if and how and even why we will want to stay within our means.
Many hurdles in life are too big for us to handle. We live in a society that tells us that we can do anything once we put our minds to it; but this is not true. We must recognize the limits with which we are born, assess our strengths, find our best talents and gifts, and use them well. This is also true of our spirituality. We are each endowed with a God-center in our brains which scientists have seen activated in meditating monks and nuns with brain scans. And each of these God-centers is likely to be as different as our physical being. It follows, then, that some of us feel more keenly the desire to seek God than others. I am guessing that some may not feel this desire at all . . . and these are people whom only God can reach. It is for these wounded souls that I pray each day.
Sirach urges us to steer clear of the quickly angry, the powerful, influential and rich. Kindle not the coals of a sinner, lest you be consumed in his blazing fire . . . Provoke no quarrel with a quick-tempered man, nor ride with him through the desert; for bloodshed is nothing to him, and when there is no to help you, he will destroy you. For my part, these words ring true.
In Chapter 9 we read more advice about becoming ensnared in matters which will take us beyond our own control mechanism. We are asked, in other words, to know and understand our weaknesses and strengths . . . to go not surety beyond our means (verse 8:13) . . . to exercise restraint where we know we have no strength . . . to take God with us everywhere we go . . . to include God in every relationship we enter.
This is the challenge we offer ourselves today as we continue our Lenten journey.
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Tomorrow – The Measure of Friends
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