habits - Related Content

Commitment doesn't emerge overnight

Thursday, March 30th 2017 12:00 pm
Sister Amy Taylor, FSPA

 

This is the fourth week of Lent; a time to re-examine the intentions you held at the beginning of the season. Have you followed through with your objectives? Have you formed a new habit that has drawn you closer to God, or has the challenge of your desired practice made it permissible in your mind to let the goal go rather than work through the obstacles to achieve it?

Today’s first reading, from the Book of Exodus, serves as an illustration through which to reflect the depths of our own individual behaviors; mannerisms that may lead to the construction of your own molten calf, drawing you away from God and back into comfortable patterns of living. Discovering an idol in your life can be disturbing, but also an opportunity to courageously face the truth of what lies at the core of the issue.

Idols don’t emerge overnight, nor does commitment to continually behold them. Examining the first moments of a dream in which you summoned up your own molten calf may offer insight into how to dispel such symbols. You don’t have to become imprisoned in behaviors that are not life affirming. It is possible to turn your life in all its complexity towards God. God celebrates each time we turn around and begin again, whether it is the first or the 309th time. Transformation is not just a Lenten devotion—it’s a life practice.

mountain-desert-courtesy-Amy-Taylor

In the desert of Scottsdale, Arizona, by Sister Amy Taylor

Discernment is a time of testing and choosing. It is a time to determine the values that will guide you not only in your decision, but also throughout your life. Are you ready to make good on your commitments allowing God--not a stagnant statue of your own creation--to be the form you follow? In times of difficulty will you call to mind God’s unfailing faithfulness and provision, especially when you walk in your own desert moments?

This week, look for the beauty that transformation offers.

Shake off statuesque habits that bind you.

Stretch into the new life that God calls you forth to this Lenten season.


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