The Big Ten God List, the commandments, the Law…when this is the reading of the day it is most difficult to choose or to be open to allowing the needed message to choose you in lectio. However, the one phrase that immediately drew my attention yesterday morning was You shall not have other gods besides me. This seems like a no brainer. However, we regularly allow objects, ideas, and people to grow in importance and stature daily until unknowingly we have created our very own versions of the Golden Calf of the Israelites. If anyone or anything is the focus of the majority of my time, attention, devotion and energy I need to review what god is looming in my unconscious presence.
I began talking about food in the blog the other day and it as easily as any other source of addiction is nothing more than a false god that we place in control over ourselves. The best time to recognize an addiction is when it is still just a temptation. God help me to continually refocus and avoid the elevating of people, ideas, or things to the status of god. Keep me humble; reminding me that you are God and I am not.
Yesterday was also the feast day for my oldest daughter’s patron saint Mary Magdalene, a Jewish woman who knew what it was to have lived through the self-imposed slavery of service to a false god. She was also the one who recognized that even when the true God is hidden in darkness you must seek and trust that God is seeking you as well. She was the one who forever will be remembered as the actual physical anointer of the Christ, the long-awaited anointed one. She was a Jew from a Gentile community of Magdala. She was the bundle of contradictions that are a hallmark of being human. We must follow the example she set in following our call even while it is still dark. Teach us to walk by faith not by sight…for even when we see, we like Mary do not recognize you in the gardener.
Angelnvj1287's Lectio Blog 