Ordinary Time
Monday, September 7
Evening
Psalm 82; 29
Job 32:1-10, 19-33:1, 19-28
Acts 13:44-52
John 10:19-30
We rejoice in your generous goodness, O God, and celebrate your lavish gifts to us this day, for you have shown your love in giving Jesus Christ for the salvation of the world. Especially we give thanks for
the labors of those who have served us today...
friends with whom we have shared...
those whom we love and who have loved us...
opportunities for our work to help others...
all beauty that delights us...
Gracious God, we know you are close to all in need, and by our prayers for others we come closer to you. We are bold to claim for others your promises of new life in Jesus Christ, as we claim them for ourselves. Especially we pray for
those in dangerous occupations...
physicians and nurses...
those who are ill or confined to nursing homes...
those who mourn...
the Roman Catholic Church...
The Lord's Prayer
Meditation
Weeds. I picked so many of them today.
I became so adept at understanding where they hide. I'm not concerned for how tall they are and how they reach up to the top. I dig on my hands and knees and yank them out at the root. These weeds are close imitators of the St. Augustine grass, and they huddle in close with the bushes. My hands could pull out seven or eight together. They are tucked deep into crannies on the tree. A few times, I seemed to uncover a super-root and I'd wonder if they sought to avoid detection, and whether the times I found those big roots I was making it much harder for them to grow back. We'll see.
It occurred to me that I was gaining moral insight. Sometimes, I felt confident that I could slowly and systematically get every weed. Other times, they seemed to come from everywhere and I'd become discouraged. I'd wonder at those times if I was falling for the weeds' own defense mechanism. Was I supposed to be feeling frustrated at just this point? I'd wonder whether there were multiple lines of defense for various weeds, ways to accustom me to living and making my peace with a garden of weeds. I could feel prayer grow within me as I pulled these weeds out and feel that satisfying 'thunk' when I knew I'd gotten something deep. As I worried at how taken the garden is, I imagined a thorough goodness which would remove every well-concealed weed from this world; that however well-hidden, that eyes of such moral clarity would identify and remove, without trace, the wickedness in the world and in ourselves.
I reaffirm my hope that Christ has done and is doing this in me so that whether its weeds in the yard or in my soul, I can beckon fall weather to come and say "yea, amen, let's pick weeds again sometime very soon, eh?"
