Judges 17: Reward in Due Season
Saturday, June 22, 2024
We have just experienced the longest liturgical season of the year, Eastertide. What will we do with the promise we have been given? How have we examined ourselves during our Lenten desert passage, what do we do now that we have arrived at the empty tomb? How do we enact the promise of the resurrection? Do we await the risen Christ who sits with us, dines with us, prays with us and heals us? Do we take what we believe to be ours by force? Or worse still, once we see that our apportioned lot has not yet arrived, will we take something from someone else as our determined recompense for what we see as an unjustified lack? Do we allow our sense of entitlement to cause us to end our Easter joy a bit too soon? Do we miss the risen Christ because we are busy elsewhere, making certain that “we get what is ours?”
Reward arrives in due season, when at its height to be savored best by those who wait on the Lord. Humility and a right attitude about who we are in relation to God and to his creatures will discipline the willing heart. The covenant is renewed. We already have our reward, although we may not yet see it. And so we pray for the wisdom to wait, the patience to discern, and the love to abide in Christ Jesus who walks and lives among us. Rather than rush to the table to take our tribal place higher than what might be ours, let us await the beckoning of the king to seat us at our proper place for he is among us, and he loves us well. We do best to wait on God’s will, rather than determine our own.
Adapted from a reflection written on April 16, 2009.
To explore different dimensions of humility, click on the image above, or visit: https://www.bigquestionsonline.com/2014/11/04/what-are-different-dimensions-humility/
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