Dai­ly Reflec­tion
August 1, 2017

Out of the Weeds

“The Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one man speaks to anoth­er.”  (Exo­dus 33:11)

For years in the desert, before the tem­ple was built, peo­ple came to the meet­ing tent “to con­sult the Lord.”  When Moses entered the tent, the stiff-necked throng who danced before the idol stood and prayed.  How will God seek vengeance?  Who must die for our sins?  Under the goat skins Moses cried “Lord.”  And the Lord answered in won­drous words of kind­ness and mer­cy.  What does God want?  “Come back to me.”  What is Moses’ plea?  “Stay with us, Lord, so we get through this togeth­er.”  God lis­tened and called Moses “my inti­mate friend.”  For forty days and nights, their con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­ued.
Aris­to­tle says that humans can­not be friends with gods. The dis­tance between them is sur­pass­ing, where­as any friend­ship requires that some­thing is shared.  Some say that God is unknow­able and words com­pro­mise, so we best wor­ship in silence.  For oth­ers, God is com­plete­ly abstract, like a prin­ci­ple or pow­er sit­u­at­ed beyond our world.  Don’t expect to hear God speak­ing, ever.  But in the tent with Moses, God shows anoth­er face.  Yah­weh is the yearn­ing face of God, who reach­es out to find us.  Whose words are carved in stone to guide us.  Who rush­es to for­give a con­trite heart.

We each have a gar­den to tend.  It’s not always easy.  My shov­el turns up twist­ed met­al left behind by ances­tors.   I can’t tell weeds from wheat.  Which seeds do I water?  Which are set aside?  When weeds first appear, their dev­as­ta­tion seems com­plete.  Noth­ing can be done with this worth­less field.  I want a right­eous gar­den free of weeds.  Let’s uproot every­thing and start over.  In this dream, no dark­ness falls and all bad seeds are ban­ished from this earth.  Then the mas­ter gar­den­er vis­its.  To my sur­prise, he push­es back some nox­ious growth to reveal a blos­som hid­den below.  Hope returns.  I learn to see what is grow­ing in the shad­ows.  Good­ness lurks amidst the weeds.  Like this earth, I am a mixed bag.  
God, please vis­it this gar­den.  Stay a while. Help us to know which seeds to water.  Pre­pare us for the harvest.