Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22

Lent 4 - Year B

Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22

Congruence of experience and interpretation is often tricky.

Experience slips and slide away from being pinned down. Memory is famously prone to emphasizing a minor point and elevating it to prominence. Timing is crucial as to when we are open for a conversion interpretation of a previous set of experiences. Are we able to see a new healing while still trapped in a web of debilitating habit of hand and heart? Experiences pile up and our ability to find an organizing principle is notoriously slow and suspect.

Our heads are often set to interpret a next experience only in light of the ethos of the prominent group in our life (past or present, seldom a desired one to come). Having learned that G*D is always the right answer for a pleasant surprise and absolved of pain (except as a set-up for a blessing yet to arrive), we are separated from self and creation/nature. Prevailing ethical standards are ethically suspect when they refuse to allow a second opinion.

So, if you can identify having had a new opening into a preferred future, rejoice, give thanks, and begin living as though tomorrow were already present. When freed from external or internal oppression, develop a steadfast love of your own.

If you can recast a sinful way away from always being particularized and leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy, there will be a background rebalancing of prevenient grace and brokenness. In this reconstituted equation, sparks of paradise will light fires of warmth, not wrath.