Thursday of the Third Week of Lent

Lectionary: 240

Thus says the LORD: 
This is what I commanded my people:
Listen to my voice;
then I will be your God and you shall be my people.
Walk in all the ways that I command you,
so that you may prosper.

The Liturgy of the Hours begins every day with an “Invitatory” psalm and that is usually Psalm 95. In a few verses the psalm recalls the happy invitation to prayer – Come let us sing to the Lord and shout with joy to the God who saves us – and then descends with a kind of inevitability into a plea and complaint -- “Oh, that today you would hear his voice: “Harden not your hearts as at Meribah – and finally to terrible threats: “Then I swore in my anger, they will not enter into my rest.”

Recited daily, the psalm reminds me of the continual challenge of fidelity. Keeping faith may be as natural and necessary as breathing; but, unlike breathing, it doesn’t come without deliberate attention. The Church and the individual within the Church must ask herself daily and many times a day, “Am I listening to the Voice of God or am I just doing things my way?”

My way might not be bad but I need a lot more guidance than my own ideas, impulses, fears, desires and preferences to navigate the thousands of decisions I make each day. 

"Thousands?" you might ask. Yes, thousands. How fast do I drive this car? When do I touch the brake? Should I pass that vehicle before I make that turn or fall in behind it? They're decisions we might not remember a few minutes later and they may have few consequences -- unless they don't. 

Do I stop and ask that woman if she is lost in the VA hospital? Do I nod to that preoccupied person? Do I take the stairs or the elevator? Do I visit this patient first, or later, or not at all? 

How am I supposed to know which patient should be visited right now? 

God knows. 

When the Jews -- of biblical times and of today -- celebrate the Law of Moses they're not thanking God simply for setting limits on everything they do. They -- and we their heirs -- thank God for the constant presence, the guiding, governing spirit that makes our actions, words and intentions effective. God's plan for our salvation must be accomplished. Mine? Not necessarily. 

“Oh, that today you would hear his voice!" Let the Spirit of Prayer guide me through a million mundane decisions wisely and with gratitude.