How easy is it not for us to limit God?
To put God on a pedestal and dissociate the concept of God with our world.
Two big things stood out for me in our readings today.
The first is that we don't necessarily see God in our everyday lives.
And I think that's a big thing contributing to the lesson of the prophet not being accepted in his own country,
In his own town.
We think God so big that God cannot imbue an ordinary person,
Somebody from our own community with gifts.
I grew up with this person.
How can they now suddenly be preaching the word of the Lord?
They then,
This then ordinary person,
How can God choose them?
Shouldn't it be somebody else?
Shouldn't it be royalty?
Shouldn't it be somebody that has studied?
Shouldn't it be somebody who lives a life separate from the rest of the community?
And all of these questions come up.
How can God choose this normal person?
It's part of a conundrum because in the same breath,
We also say that God has given us each gifts and talents.
And then this creates a form of cognitive dissonance for us all.
I never thought growing up that God would call me to become a priest,
A Catholic priest for that matter.
I grew up in a traditional Protestant church.
And yet,
As we saw in the first reading,
God then just sometimes comes and says,
I've got work for you.
And many times when I am in discussion,
It actually happened yesterday again.
I was talking to an old school friend whom I hadn't spoken to in many years.
And they asked me,
Your profile photo,
What's going on?
And we spoke and he said that they would never in a thousand years have guessed that it would happen for me.
My two of us.
Yet when that call is there,
You cannot say no.
And it doesn't matter then that what you say is not always heard in the community that you say it.
What matters is that you listen.
You listen to the call and you do something about it.
And it's not easy.
We saw in our second reading about the thorn in the flesh to keep us from becoming too proud because that's also,
It is easy to now suddenly say,
Oh gosh,
You know,
I've got this title or I have this gift and let me bestow it upon you mere mortals,
Whatever that gift may be.
So God has ways to keep us in check because even if you are called to share the word of the Lord in whatever way,
As a priest,
As a prophet in your daily life,
The calling doesn't actually make you any better than any other person in my life.
It actually highlights in a very painful way how unworthy I am.
It highlights every time that I sin,
When I step out of harmony with the Lord,
How much I need His grace,
How much I need the Lord in my life.
So then instead of going on to the beautiful,
Well,
Not beautiful Delta Ego trip,
Then you can easily then go into the woe is me trip.
But we see that the Lord says,
When you are at your weakest,
That is when I am at my strongest.
When I lose everything and I have nothing to give,
Then God's grace comes and makes me useful.
Saint Francis wrote that many,
Many years ago,
Paraphrasing of course,
But it is so true.
When I am stripped of my ego,
When I am stripped of everything that is not me,
Then my true meaning comes out and then God can start using me.
And that stripping of the ego and the stripping of the non-being that we all are actually,
But the stripping of what we are not.
It happens in different ways.
It happens in strife.
It happens in becoming aware of anger.
It happens in disease and sickness.
It happens in our tears when we lose our loved ones.
At the moment,
The world is weeping.
The world is angry and scared.
Yet,
So many people are finding God in this time.
Finding that all the accessories of life are being taken away and life is being presented in a whole new way.
And it's beautiful.
It's horrific.
You can't really see the difference between the two.
A dreadful beauty.
So moving forward this week,
Perhaps when the world starts looking overwhelming,
When you're a lone voice trying to share a message and it doesn't get heard,
Remember today.
Remember that Jesus was also not heard in his community.
Yet,
In that not being heard,
His message was spread so much further than it could have.
And take heart in that.
I mean.
