Thursday, August 8, 2024
Memorial of Saint Dominic, priest
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
The days are coming
I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts. I will be their God and they shall be my people – no longer will they need to teach their friends and relatives how to know the Lord. For all from least to greatest shall know me. So declares the Lord.
One nettle under the skin of parents and grandparents is God’s desire for them to “teach their children in the way they should go.” So that “when they are old they will not depart from it.” The power of this teaching multiplies when it’s echoed in school, in church, in the homes of grandparents and friends, and in the society in which they are growing up.
It’s difficult. Hard enough for adults to “not depart from it,” harder still for kids, even before they encounter the questions of adolescence. Circumstances and our thoughts about them generate emotions, which simmer whether they are expressed or not. The two Inside Out movies go to great pixar-lengths to point this out.
The basic emotions of joy, anger, sadness, fear and disgust are joined by anxiety, embarrassment, envy and ennui as the puberty button gets pushed in the second film. Many of these emotions come out of misunderstanding. All of these emotions change tone when they are not expressed. I FEEL ANGRY, I FEEL SAD, and I FEEL HAPPY. Somehow those words don’t come easily, and one generation that doesn’t say them isn’t very consistent at teaching the next generation.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
When God tells Jeremiah’s listeners his law will be written on their hearts, from the day of their birth and all of their lives, he prepares the way for these blessed ones to know their emotions and to express them. And the emotions won’t be the result of fruitless thoughts or wrong actions, much easier to both manage and express because misunderstanding will be a thing of the past.
Sounds like the pre-fall Garden of Eden to me. Hard to imagine, but there it sits on the pages of the Bible. The Promise. The New Covenant. Inside and out, we’ll understand ourselves and each other, and communicate that understanding. Family, school, church, culture will echo each other’s message that God is our creator, we are his children, and all of us are part of the same functional family.
Jesus told Simon, and through him the rest of us. “I will give you the keys to the Kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” So far this hasn’t worked so well, because we misunderstand, we are selfish, we act toward each other accordingly and so our minds and bodies are messed up much of the time. But no longer.
All shall know me, and I will forgive their wrongdoing and remember their sin no more.
When God speaks, people listen. God’s forgiveness speaks louder than words. In this new world, we are free.
(Jeremiah 31, Psalm 51, Matthew 16)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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