The Grander Plan

The Thursday after Ash Wednesday

Deuteronomy 30:15-20; Psalm 1:1-2, 3, 4, 6; Matthew 4:17; Luke 9:22-25

A psychiatrist found that some of his patients, people who seemed to have everything, were deeply unhappy. While each of them had successful careers, they had not chosen them because they loved the work, but because they thought the money would make them happy. Only later in life did they find what truly made them happy; unfortunately, by then they had obligations that required them to keep the job, whether they liked it or not. As part of their treatment, the psychiatrist encouraged each of them to spend a little time, just 30 minutes a week at first, doing what made them happy, and, while they were doing it, to seriously consider the idea that there was a grander plan for their lives, that they came from something bigger than themselves.

Not bad advice, and not very different from what we hear in the readings. As we come upon Moses, he is nearing the end of his life. Looking out upon the Promised Land he’s forbidden to enter, and knowing that Israel will soon go on without him, he speaks the last words he will ever say to them, the thing closest to his heart, the grander plan God has in mind: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the LORD, your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him (Deuteronomy 30:15-20).

This is the plan he knows is happiness: to heed the voice of God, to hold fast to Him. But the choice is theirs, and I’m sure Moses knew it was one they’d too often not make; and indeed, the history of Israel would be littered with choices they thought would make them happy, but left them miserable instead.

The start of the Lenten season is the perfect time for us to ask ourselves how different we are from them. Do we heed the voice of God? Do we hold fast to him? If we wonder how to do that, the psalmist tells us: By delighting in the law of the Lord, by meditating on it. That makes sense; when we love someone, we delight in spending as much time as we can with them; we want to know them as well as possible, and we want them to know us. That leads us to prayer, in which we speak to God, but it also means taking time to listen when God answers us, which he does every time we hear or read Scripture.

Sometimes, the answer is what we may not want to hear. Today is a good example, as our Lord speaks about self-denial and taking up our cross every day. Meditating on that, the question he wants us to ask ourselves begins to emerge: Do I sometimes take up only those parts of the cross that I want to take up? Do I choose my own plan – more of what I want – and less of what God has in mind for me?

Facing the truth can be very uncomfortable, but it is also very consoling, and it is always salvation. For the truth is Christ, and Christ is constantly calling us as the gospel acclamation says: to repent, to change our minds. If we think in terms of having to make huge changes in our lives, that can be frightening, but remember what the psychiatrist advised his patients: Baby steps. So, this Lent, take just a little extra time with Christ to let him reveal, however he chooses, the grander plan for your life; to remind you that you come from something bigger than yourself. The psychiatrist didn’t name that grander plan; perhaps he didn’t know it, but we do – it is the Kingdom of heaven, and that something bigger, the grace we need to carry our cross every day, and follow Christ all the way to Calvary, the tomb, and the eternal glory that lies beyond.

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