Daily Reflections ...

The text from Isaiah is about paying attention to what is important and not allowing ourselves to be taken by those things that do not matter very much in the end.

It is a constant battle. Yet, as we look back over our lives, we will probably know what is meant here. Just think of those many things that we have worried about or become preoccupied with, most of which we can scarcely recall now.

God sees our lives through the eyes of love. God’s love is not our usual sentimental notion of love as having a good feeling about whatever is happening. God’s love is not like that. Love is the power that has brought the universe into being. It cries out for justice and drills down into our very hearts. It roots out anything that cannot endure into the life God wills for us. It breaks apart and brings back together. Love is not safe, and it cannot be domesticated.

At the centre of God’s love for us is not God feeling good about who we are and what we do. At the centre of God’s love is mercy, where he sees us as we truly are and offers to heal us. But we must sincerely ask him to do that.

Love always speaks the truth, although it will bide its time to do that. We see this in the events of today’s text from the Gospel of Mark. Jesus, who could see what was happening around him through the eyes of love, allowed the crowd to have its way. They are in the mood for a celebration and wish to proclaim him ‘king’. Jesus does not prevent this from happening as he had done previously (see John 6:15), for he could see that it was part of the path that he must take.

Jesus quietly watches it all, aware that this is the crowd that would soon turn on him, and yet also aware of the crowd as those who would be saved and healed by his supreme act of love. That crowd includes you and me.

by Shane Dwyer