Thursday after Ash Wednesday – 15th February 2024 – Deut 30,15-20; Lk 9,22-25
Living our Choices
The first reading lays out the two choices that God offers to the Israelites: life or death, blessings or curses. As Moses draws close to the promised land, he knows that he will not enter. He then offers the Israelites the choices that God presents to them: life with God through obedience to God’s precepts, or death through disobedience. Life comes from being in relationship with God, death flows from turning one’s back on God. The way of life that God offers is not one that much of the world proposes. In fact, the world sees God’s ways as limiting when, if properly understood, they are truly liberating. The life that God offers is not freedom to indulge in every desire and pleasures of this world. It comes as a result of being willing to die to self so as to live with God forever. However, when presented with such a choice it seems hard to believe that people would choose the path to death. Life, now and in the future, consists in hearing, assimilating, and living out the way of life that God proposes. The season of Lent allows us to see what aspects of our lives we need to die – those items that prevent us from living a life for God.
