Fr. Don's Daily Reflection
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”
The noisy and wrong-headed preachers, mostly on TV, who use the last book of the New Testament, Revelation, as a blueprint for the future make it difficult to see the book for what it is. It’s a book of consolation for persecuted Christians and a hymn of praise and thanksgiving to God. (Why in the world would God give us a blueprint for the future and at the same time give us free will?)
Without hesitation we can join the praise and adoration of God that fill the book. (Admittedly, many aspects of the book are bizarre in the extreme.) Praise of God must accompany our tendency to put, at least in theory, all the emphasis on serving God in other human beings. There is a place for and a great value in the worship of God, no matter how much we value serving others -- and we must.
Science has long since removed the earth from any central position in our universe but in so many ways our thinking is still centered not simply on this earth but on ourselves. Turning to God in worship and thanksgiving is a way of expanding our horizons. We think of and praise the One from whom this amazing and inexhaustible universe comes.
Adoration is the appropriate response to the gift that is creation. We can enjoy it, try to understand it and, as is all too obvious, use it, even unwisely. Taking the spotlight off ourselves occasionally, even daily, is not a bad idea. It is in fact a liberating and expansive one.
“O Lord our God, you are worthy to receive glory and honor and power! For you have created all things; by your will they came to be and were made” (Revelation 4:11)!
Psalm 27: “I believe I shall see the Lord’s goodness / in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord; be strong; / be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord!”
