Meditation Moment in Lent, Day 24: Give Up, Take On, Pray

       The power of faith is the power of goodness and truth, which is the power of God…The opposite of faith is therefore fatalism...[that] finds expression in statements like 'Nothing can be done about it.' and 'There is no hope.' These are the statements of people who do not really believe in the power of God, people who do not really hope for what God has promised.   

~ Albert Nolan, O.P.* 1934-2022

Faith....do I have it?  I think I do ~ I must, I go to church, I pray ~ but then there are those moments when I am unsure of what God means to my life. There are times when I am certain there is nothing I can do that will make any useful difference in the world. I even struggle with hope as the world seems to be in constant chaos and turmoil, twisting and turning in violence and calamity. I question my faith often and I suppose I always will. And then what helps is seeing that tiny mustard seed ~ is that really all I need? I think I can muster that much in my way of Faith. Just that much…

Dear Jesus,
   You said that if I have faith as small as a mustard seed I can move mountains [Matthew 17:20]. I feel that strength and know I can move anything larger than myself on those "good days." On those not so good days, sometimes it's all I can do to move myself. But when I look at that tiny seed, I begin to approach hope. For today, I'll give up pondering the details of what I'm sure I believe and what I'm not so sure of. I'll take on walking through each day with that mustard seed as a tangible sign of Your love and inspiration ~ from its tiny beginnings to its full leafing of surprising height that produces more seeds to give flavor and warmth to my life. I'll pray for more hope and more confidence in my faith. In the meantime, I have faith in that tiny seed's magic ~ within it there is the potential for tremendous growth, just as there is within me when I feel my faith reaching for You. amen.

Full Grown Israeli Mustard Tree

*Albert Nolan, OP, was born in Cape Town as a 4th generation South African of English descent. With inspiration from reading the works of Thomas Merton, he entered the Dominican Order in 1954. He taught theology to and had been Vicar General of the Dominicans in South Africa. The author of several books, his 1976 Jesus Before Christianity is the most well-known and has been reissued several times and as recently as 2001, its 25th Anniversary edition.  In it, Nolan discusses Jesus' radical struggle for the full humanity of the poor in the time of first-century Palestine. Nolan writes that Jesus "challenged the rich to identify in solidarity with the poor," a universal theme that is persistently relevant across time and culture.

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