In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.
Welcome back. I would like to share what I hear in church from time to time, especially sermons.
Last Sunday, our associate pastor, Reverend Loren Caldwell, preached a sermon about how the way we pray affects the way we live. Her text she chose was one of my favorite parables by Jesus.
It is the parable of the Pharisee who went to the temple to pray beside a tax collector.
The Pharisee thanked his god because he was not like the tax collector, a sinner. He attended services, gave his tithe, and obeyed Torah. His god was pretty damn lucky to have him on his side.
The tax collector asked God to be merciful to him, a sinner.
Jesus said that the tax collector's prayer was the one God heard.
I have been thinking about how Reverend Caldwell began her sermon. She imagined what she would do were she living in Rome, circa the first century, and how she might have a miserable life.
She would be a woman after all, and unless she was married, or exceptionally wealthy and influential, her life would not count for much.
She might travel to the Coliseum and make herself feel better by seeing how terrible were the lives of the gladiators who had to fight to live.
She imagined how she might be unhappy during various historical times and how she might cheer herself up by comparing herself to other people who were less fortunate.
Then, she imagined if she lived today, and she was a teenager in school who was not very popular, she might befriend someone who was even less popular just to feel superior.
She would pray to God as she lived her life and thank God that as bad as her life was at least it was not as bad as others.
It is so true of so many people that they measure their worth by the low expectations of others.
For instance, a man who drops out of society, has no bank account, snorts meth and smokes dope everyday, votes not one time, yet works every day for cash so he does not have to pay taxes--he is able to look at his neighbor who lives on welfare and say, "At least I'm not that bum."
We must be able to compare ourselves to how our God of love loves us. We are all separated from our God of love and from each other. The separation can turn into alienation, that is, a delusion that our way back to our God of love is lost forever.
Faith says it is never lost, ever, period. We just admit we are like that tax collector. We're sinners and we move on with the confidence that we are accepted by our God of love.
When we pray with that in our hearts, it changes us, sets us free to become whole.
Sometimes the shortest distance between understanding why we may be unhappy is that distance between where we stand and a mirror. Today is a new day. We can compare ourselves to who we were yesterday and transcend that so God can do God's work in our lives.
Blessings...
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