Wednesday, March 30, 2022                                     (today’s lectionary)
Come out! God wants us home
God says, “I will allot the desolate heritages.” And to the prisoners, he says, “Come out!” To those in darkness: “Show yourselves!” Along the way you shall find pasture, on every bare height shall their pastures be.
In our centering prayer meeting last night Mary Lou asked us to read a passage by Henri Nouwen, a passage about God’s “eagerness” to forgive us.
… Whether for a second, third or fourth time I come, God does not keep count. God just waits for our return, without resentment or desire for revenge. God wants us home.
 That phrase, “God wants us home,” struck all of us. One of our companions couldn’t be with us on Zoom last night, because he was on an airplane somewhere. Still, we felt his presence. Mary Lou, who now lives in an assisted living community, remembers the first time she thought of this new environment as “home.” I thought of how easily I remembered the right lanes and turned down the right streets to arrive at Andi’s house in Austin, part of my own personal and particular home after thousands of miles everywhere but.
“Turn your hearts toward home,” the encouragers at Focus on the Family told us. Thomas Merton wrote, “There is no way to tell people that they are walking around, shining like the sun.” So home with God is not elusive or distant, but right here, God inside me, “shining like the sun.” God’s acceptance and forgiveness let me rest in his easy chair, in his lap, cozied up under a big heavenly blue comforter. Rain or shine.
On every bare height shall their pastures be. They shall not hunger or thirst, nor shall the scorching wind or sun strike them, for he who pities them leads them and guides them beside springs of water.
I asked my friend how his day was going. “Like a penny on a railroad track,” he said. But then he added, “On good days I gather memories, and on bad days, I gather lessons.” Every day I am home with God.
I cannot do anything on my own. I judge as I hear, and my judgment is just, because I do not seek my own will but the will of the one who sent me.
In our centering prayer times we learn to accept the “weeds” we put in the way of listening to God with our whole hearts. Father Thomas Keating named these distractions: woolgathering, enlightenments, emotions, dumping our unconscious and self-consciousness (WEEDS).
And still God welcomes me with open arms, even waiting and watching while I wander. God wants me home. Perhaps it takes me most of my life to realize this, to get things straight, to know I’m in the right lane. When I do, oh yes, God is there. He never went anywhere; it’s always been me.
The hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out.
(Isaiah 49, Psalm 145, John 11, John 5)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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