Listen to my voice!

We are living through a time where the political climate has become more adversarial and partisan. This has probably been as true in how we vote for politicians as it is how we choose to believe in what is God is saying to us. It feels like a great divide has been created within humanity which can threaten to tear us apart. We can start to feel hidden violence and antipathy which seeks to destroy us. In listening to that voice we start to notice how it can lead to disharmony, intolerance and prejudice on both sides of the divide. The hidden force seems to revel in what will dampen our enthusiasm, confuse our best intentions and leave us believing that we are only destined for destruction. It is easy to see how this bad news can draw our attention and drive our lives. It can cause us to become paralysed, fearful and reactive in making instinctive choices which are not ours to control. In this atmosphere, we need to be careful that we do not succumb to false images of what is successful, esteemed and relevant either in our private or corporate life.

What we are seeking is eternal life and the voice which rings true to the reason for which we are created. We know that when politics enters into the spiritual life we can adopt positions which only reinforce what we already know or which play to our worst fears. They can even start to portray our image of God as a dulled vision of ourselves. It can affect the way we read scripture, listen to theological arguments and how we seek to live our lives. We can easily become consumers of religious things rather than people called into a life-giving relationship. In this environment, our religious practice becomes more about what makes us comfortable, safe and secure rather than encountering the person of Jesus in our own vulnerability and need.

Yet Jesus is the only person who can meet us in this poverty where we acknowledge who it is that we hunger and thirst for. We want food that can satisfy us and drink that quenches our thirst. This is more than just filling ourselves on our own terms but rather allowing God to meet us in that place of deep need. The Gospel we are called to proclaim is not a cleverly argued text but a living relationship which wells up to eternal life within us. It is from that place where we have to acknowledge that we have had a gutful of suggestions which sound good but do not sustain us. It means that we need to sit with those things that stew within us and which cannot be easily resolved just through our own efforts. That we can be honest with God with our whole self in our prayer and in the way we live. It is from this place that we discover a way of incarnational living which befriends us and calls us to proclaim the Good News. This will change the way we live because it is a political statement but it is one in which we seek life, not death!