Devotional Thought for our Monday!
²²  So get rid of your old self, which made you live as you used to—the old self that was being destroyed by its deceitful desires. ²³  Your hearts and minds must be made completely new, ²⁴  and you must put on the new self, which is created in God’s likeness and reveals itself in the true life that is upright and holy. Ephesians 4:22-24 (TEV)

163      You shouldn’t be so easy on yourself! Don’t wait until the New Year to make your resolutions. Every day is a good day to make good decisions. Hodie, nunc!—Today, now! It tends to be the poor defeatist types who leave it until the New Year before beginning afresh… And even then, they never really begin.

Yesterday, some 60 friends and I knelt at the altar at Concordia, and celebrated the mercy of God.  We celebrated by receiving the Body and Blood of Christ, broken and spilled for us, to cover our sin, to remind us of the glorious life God gives us, where we walk with Jesus.

It was glorious, it was incredible, this sharing of God’s love, of realizing God’s desire to make us His has been fulfilled at the cross, and we celebrated it, together! What an incredible, overwhelming experience, as we were there, together, and realized the love of God!

Yet today is Monday, and what we used to call the “tyranny of the urgent” has found its way to dominate my life.  Too many critical things to do, competing with daily tasks, deadlines, and meetings to finish planning.  While balancing out the people who need help. 

It is as if yesterday’s moment of bliss happened a long time ago, not just yesterday.

It feels so distant, so much not part of who I am, today.  

And if I have trouble remembering – reliving those moments – how can I easily connect to my baptism?  And if I struggle to connect to either, my connection to Christ and to the cross where I was united to Him fades into the distant past as well. 

It would seem like those moments fade like our New Years’ resolutions, with a lot of great intent, and little impact and little change if anything.  To use Paul’s thought, we struggle to get rid of the old desires, the old self.

And what difference would it make; make these resolutions real as Paul advises?  How would it change the tyranny of the urgent, how would it change my Monday? 

The Psalmist tells us how to make this new beginning happen.  With words, words we know so, so well.

Be still, and know I am God…. God Almighty is with you, the God of Jacob is your refuge.

As He was when we knelt at the altar, He hasn’t left, He hasn’t stopped loving us, He hasn’t stopped being our God….. rely on that, for He promised.  He is with you, right now at your desk, or while you sip your coffee and wonder how to escape. He is there in the midst of this broken world. He is there with you.

Knowing that, makes every moment new, it makes every moment a communion, a fellowship with God who loves us. 

Amen!

Escriva, Josemaria. The Forge (Kindle Locations 768-772). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.