Sunday March 20, 2011

The Transfiguration

This is my favorite Bible story. My favorite story. I've written more about it than any other and I've thought about it more than any other. I always find something new and wonderful in it. I've found so many lessons in its details. It's my Bible story.

I do wonder, though, how many of the lessons I've then applied to my own life. The homily today took the injunction of the Father's Voice from on High as its point of focus - and as much as I love Father Rolo, he gave a homily about how all we remember are his personal stories that seemed mainly composed of his personal stories. So I was disappointed.

But the point stands. I'm very good at teasing out lessons, taking the wonder and awe of stories and verses and acknowledging them, reveling in them. Praising God for the extreme degree of His love.

But do I then apply it to my life? And if I don't, then am I really listening to Him? Even if I think I have it all figured out? Probably not because I think so.

I feel like God has to surprise me to get me to listen. Perhaps that will happen as the Little Black Book and I linger over this story for the next week, which I am quite looking forward to, but the surprise today in church was me meditating on how I'd have liked to be a priest and my struggle with the question: does that mean I'm called to be a nun? And, as I ponder this when I should be praying the Intercessions, comes the prayer for artists, who are bringing God's Light into the world. It seemed an answer.

I wasn't really listening for it. I had to be spiritually smacked upside the head because I keep trying to solve these problems for myself - for all I talked such a good game last night.

I'd be up on that mountaintop glorying in Jesus' transfiguration and making plans to built tents, asking for approval. God the Father would have to descend and say, as He did to Peter, 'Please shut up and listen to what I'm really saying.'

So I need to start truly incorporating these lessons into my life. Or why am I asking all these questions? I knew from the start I don't have the wisdom or knowledge to work the answers out for myself.

Dear Lord, please be with me always. Please help me to open my heart and my mind and find enough space in my life to listen to You and Your Word. Please remind me, smack me upside the head when You must, and never withdraw from me. Help me to remember to look to You and to keep Your commandments and Your lessons in my life for all the days of my life.