Belonging Still

Thursday of Week 18 in Ordinary Time

Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 51
Matthew 16:13-23

The last couple lines from today’s Jeremiah passage:

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 have need to teach their friends and relatives how to know the Lord.  All, from least to greatest, shall know me, says the Lord, for I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more.

When I read this passage I wonder if the intimate relationship God describes is like when I tightly held my infants after a fever broke, or hugged my pre-teens after we reconciled from a heated disagreement.  Those were times when you just can’t get close enough.  Intimacy is always the most palpable after passing through something, a danger, a rupture, an honest confession. 

After all that…we still belong to one another!

So what if we never reflect enough to see our own sin?

Or what if that’s all we see and we are stuck there?

It is the whole movement. 

Bringing honest and open hearts to the other

Trusting that growth and healing come from somewhere

In humility, confessing that the somewhere is outside of me

Daring to go through the uncontrollable

Refusing to sit in brokenness

Hoping for something new to be written on my heart

Rejoicing in that long embrace

And it all goes nicely with Psalm 51...

A clean and humbled heart create for me…
A willing spirit sustain in me…