Monday March 22, 2022
We had the image of sentinels waiting for the dawn earlier this Lent. Today the Psalmist longs for God the way a deer longs for running streams. We cannot live without water anymore that we can live without God. Some translations say the hart pants for water. Think of how after mowing the yard in July or tossing bales of hay on a sultry summer afternoon, you pant for water. How wonderful it feels in your mouth—cool, refreshing, restorative—when you are given a glass to drink. Something that we take for granted, like water, becomes so important when we need it but rely on other to give it to us. It is easy to take God for granted, too. Jesus reminds his followers today, in Luke’s Gospel, that there were many lepers in Israel at the time of Elisha, but only Naaman was cured, as recounted in today’s excerpt from 2 Kings, and he was a foreigner! But Naaman came to find the “man of God”, longing to be cured, believing and that he could be cured. Jesus is telling us that there are many deserving souls in the world. If we wish to be counted among them, we need to believe in and long for the Lord. More than we long for water, food, friendship, status, or whatever we crave, we must long for the Lord. I’m going to spend some time today thinking about what I long for. What is important to me? Then I’ll need to ask myself, “Have my longings supplanted God?” Do I long for God more than I long for a cool glass of water on a hot summer day?