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I appreciated Rod’s comment on yesterday’s post:
Giraffes with their long necks can look back into the past and forward into the future. Rabbits are nourished by the grass at their feet! My focus at prayer up till now today has been on looking into the future and manuring the fig tree, now the rabbit is saying what about now?
Today’s scriptures bring us into the now.
Naaman was a leper who, unlike others suffering from this then-incurable disease, had the favour of the king for whom he was a respected army commander.
After a happy intervention (you can read about it in today’s first reading) Naaman set his hopes for healing on a foreign visit to bathe in special waters: “Surely Abana and Pharpah, the rivers of Damascus, are better than any water in Israel?”
Naaman’s pride prevents him from accepting that the healing of God is available in his own homeland, with local prophets, and in very ordinary tasks. Eventually Naaman is healed not by bathing in the waters of mighty and distant rivers, but in the local and unspectacular creek trickling through his own land – the Jordan River.
Jesus opens today’s gospel with the well-known reminder: no prophet is ever accepted in their own land.
Why is it that we find it difficult to recognise divine action and instruments in our here and now?
Perhaps because it’s safer to relegate divine presence and action to the distant and the exceptional. We forget that in Jesus Christ God is present and active among us in the people we encounter each day in our own families, study and social worlds and workplaces.
Yes Jesus can and does make himself known in dramatic and startling signs. However every dull routine and mundane hour each common conversation and everyday encounter is a place of potential encounter with Jesus.
The evidence is in the gospels. There we notice that encounters with Jesus are routinely and daily in the routine and everyday plans and patterns of the lives of people in their own neighbourhoods.
Our Christian faith is therefore remarkably convenient. To encounter Christ we don’t have to go anywhere other than where we are geographically, physically, emotionally, intellectually or spiritually.
In Jesus God is where we are, here and now. Speak to him and listen for him.
Here and now.
Like the rabbits.
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Send your date and time to add to the list, and just turn up at at one of the advertised gatherings, just one hour, focussing on where we are encountering Christ.
TODAY CHRISTCHURCH
Monday 23 March 10.00am (& every Monday)
Moku cafe, Bush Inn Centre
Waimairi Road.
LOWER HUTT
Wed 26 March 10.30am
Invite from Catherine
Columbus Cafe in Mitre 10
25 Bouverie St, Petone.
WHANGANUI
Thursday 27 March 7.00am
St. Mary’s Church – & every Thursday
Invitation from Kate
NEW PLYMOUTH
Thursday 27 March 10.00am
Stumble Inn, 200 Mangorei Road
Invitation from Joan
KAPITI COAST
Monday 31 March 11am to noon
The Cafe at Harrison’s
23 Peka Peka Rd, Waikanae beach.
Invitation from Catherine
Yesterday after Mass, a fellow parishioner remarked to me as we stood outside “Lately, I get more out of running than I do out of the readings at Mass…” This is a very Catholic and prayerful person, so I was somewhat surprised by the comment. But rather than thinking this was coming from a shallow place (perhaps on the road towards leaving the practise of the faith), I think it highlights what you’re saying here John, that this person is actually open to an encounter with God in the ordinariness of life in addition to the encounters available in the sacraments.
A convenient faith! Perfect. What else could we want. (Apart from the days when you feel you haven’t got it right – and it’s stalking you!)