A Moment Aside for 23 February 2021

 A Moment Aside --- 23 February 2021    

 

With the world the way it is right now, everything seems adrift. Previous schedules and agendas are dropped and the familiar way of doing things appears to be gone. Only time will tell what the “new normal” will be like, because we can be pretty sure that the “normal” we knew is not going to come back.

With such a whirlwind of change constantly around us, there is little to be sure of… and that’s rather sad. We may have to look closer at certain things.

First, the love of God will never desert us. Paul wrote For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,  nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)

Richard Rohr’s statement in the picture above reminds us that our thirst and search for God becomes both “an anchor and a sail” in time of uncertainty and drift. Anchors keep ships in place and sails propel them. Our spiritual journey grounds us in the thirst for the Divine and propels us to continue to go deeper. Such a spiritual journey will not end until the seeker finds what they’ve been seeking.

As a deer longs for flowing streams,
            so my soul longs for you, O God.
       My soul thirsts for God,
            for the living God.
     When shall I come and behold
             the face of God? (Psalm 32: 1-2)

Or as St. Augustine wrote in his Confessions:

      “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”