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.
But they obeyed not, nor did they pay heed.
Prosperity resides with goodness, justice, mercy, and fidelity. It is a companion of beauty and truth. It despises ignorance, suspicion, and malevolence. It has no use for waste and finds nothing amusing in ugly things.
Prosperity has no time for resentments; it does not cultivate their memory and builds no memorial shrines for them. It remembers the courage and integrity of ancestors, especially of those who lived with dignity despite insurmountable odds. It honors the martyrs who spoke the truth.
Prosperity remembers those who built today's infrastructure and it readily builds tomorrow's. It invests deeply in the spiritual, intellectual, and physical world that tomorrow's children might know peace and plenty.
Always there is struggle against chaos. Prosperity might be amused by the ugly or chaotic, but is not fascinated. If it discovers promising seeds of future possibilities in chaos, it cultivates the seeds, but not the mud.
In today's gospel we hear once again a pronouncement of doom against the divided nation, the nation which agreed to disagree and then to be disagreeable. It cannot stand.
The old and new testaments of the Bible promise prosperity to those who speak the truth, and doom to those who cultivate untruth. For every promise of prosperity there is a threat of disease, poverty, and war.
I call heaven and earth today to witness against you. I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the LORD, your God, obeying his voice, and holding fast to him. For that will mean life for you, a long life for you to live on the land which the LORD swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give to them. Deut 30:19-20
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I love to write. This blog helps me to meditate on the Word of God, and I hope to make some contribution to our contemplations of God's Mighty Works.
Ordinarily, I write these reflections two or three weeks in advance of their publication. I do not intend to comment on current events.
I understand many people prefer gender-neutral references to "God." I don't disagree with them but find that language impersonal, unappealing and tasteless. When I refer to "God" I think of the One whom Jesus called "Abba" and "Father", and I would not attempt to improve on Jesus' language.
You're welcome to add a thought or raise a question.