Go Ahead...USE It!

If someone gave you a new car, would you leave it in the garage?  Seems like a waste, doesn’t it? 

Write down the vision clearly upon the tablets,
so that one can read it readily.
For the vision still has its time,
presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint;
if it delays, wait for it,
it will surely come, it will not be late.

I was probably 50 when I began taking evening courses at the University, long after I had received my last degree.  I took them because I realized that soon I’d be retired and not be able to do so.  It seemed like a waste not to use this resource that was free to me as an employee.  When some of the traditionally aged students saw me walk into the classroom and take a seat at a desk just like them, they squirmed and commented to each other that they might have a poorer chance for a good grade with old guys like me there.  But it was one of those students who provided me

with the most persistent lesson from that course.  “God does not disappoint” he said while supporting a statement he had made.  It was stated simply, elegantly, this truth he claimed.  He stood it on its own legs and trusted it to stand.  God does not disappoint.  What certainty he had, what conviction.  He wrote it clearly on the tablet of his character, where it was clear to all of us, even an old guy like me. 

The readings for this coming Sunday http://www.usccb.org/nab/100310.shtml  are about putting to use what has been given to us.  In the first reading we hear a lament that would be quite appropriate for the current oh-so-slow economic recovery: “How long, oh Lord?”  And it is the statement above that is God’s reply.  Write down the truth; you know what it is.  Post it where you and others can see it.  Live in confidence that it is true.

The Psalm and response refer to Meribah.  The wandering tribe of Israel was thirsty, calling out t God, complaining to Moses.  God told Moses to call the people together in front of a rock there in the desert, sand all around, scorching sun . . . and whack it with his staff, telling the people that water would come out of it.  Yeah, right, thinks Moses, and he does a kind of vamp, the kind of thing a speaker does when the microphone doesn’t work, killing time while he figures out how to get out of this spot, making a spectacle of himself.  Unable to wiggle out of it, he finally takes a disbelieving tap on the rock, and yep!  Out comes water! That young student in my class should have been there instead of Moses.  God does not disappoint.

In the second reading, a group of early Christians was challenged to take their cars out of their garages, not to hide their faith but to rely on it to take them where they want to go, to build a more just world for themselves.

Beloved:
I remind you, to stir into flame
the gift of God that you have through the imposition of my hands.
For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice
but rather of power and love and self-control.

The Gospel’s tough, if taken alone, to understand.  It’s about a master treating a servant like a servant.  It flies in the face of our equity and brotherhood.  So we shake our heads.  But if we look at the fabric of evidence in this series of readings, the Gospel story can reasonable be understood (in its historical context including right relationship with servants) to reinforce the message of the previous texts.  We’ve been given a gift in our faith in a loving God.  Don’t park it and perhaps go out and look at it every once in awhile.  Don’t wax it and polish it and admire it, or tell your friends about it.  Drive it.  Rely on it to get where you want to go.  It will not disappoint.