THE WORD IN LENT -7

Rethink Prayer 

First Week of Lent: Tuesday, 24th Feb, 2015

Is 55:10-11; Mt 6:7-15

Prayer is a fundamental act of a believer. However, the way we understand it can differ quite drastically. Apart from the clarity that prayer cannot be mere favour list made to God and apart from the comprehensive understanding that prayer should essentially include an act of contrition, that of thanksgiving and of praise along with the petitions made, prayer should be understood basically as a relationship with God. I love to share my personal definition of prayer as "living our life with God", every moment of it - joys and sorrows, failures and successes, temptations and threats, difficulties and dreams! All this, with the confidence that the Lord is with me and that God's ways are best that can happen to me at anytime. 

Asking for and clamouring for something is very much like a child's relation to his or her father or mother! But remaining solely at that level would leave us childish. We need to move to the next level of submitting into the hands of the Lord; abandoning ourselves to the eternal Will and the powerful Word of the Lord. This we will be able to do only when we trust the Lord as our Father, as someone who protects us always and rescues us when we are in distress. 

Let us rethink our outlook on prayer - it is not begging God; neither is it making a wishlist to God nor counselling God as to what is best to be done! Prayer is a loving entrustment of ourselves into the hands of God, our loving Father and Mother.

THE WORD IN LENT -4

Choosing God

Saturday after Ash Wednesday: 21st February, 2015

Is 58: 9b-14; Lk 5: 27-32

"Follow Me" - is the loud and clear invitation from the Lord. The choice is ours! The crux of lenten practices is disciplining oneself to choose God.

When we choose the Lord, we follow the Lord. When we choose the Lord, we choose the ways of the Lord. When we choose God, we would choose justice and love. When we choose God, we would choose to love our brothers and sisters with sincerity and commitment. When we choose God, we would choose to stand against all oppression and malice. Killings in the name of God and persecutions in the name of one's spiritual affiliations, are the heights of insincerity and hyprocrisy. When we choose to hurt another, we choose to be opposed to God. When we choose to slander the other, we choose to be contrary to God.

The call today is to choose God...on a daily basis. In our relationships, in our priorities, in all our interactions, we are called to choose God and to make that choice clear and loud for every one to see, be inspired and emulate.