Reflections By The Bay

Monday, January 10, 2022

January 10, 2022

EXPANSION AND CONTRACTION

The urge to pray and the urge to sin both seem to be ways of expanding ourselves – to become greater, better, bigger, more than we feel we are.

When I feel small, when I feel all alone, when I feel empty, I feel less.

It’s then I want to feel bigger, better, richer, fuller, more than I am.

So I better reach out for God in prayer – who then sends me – to love my neighbor.

Or I do the opposite: I try to put down my neighbor, so I can use him or her as a pedestal.

Or I use my neighbor – or cheat my neighbor – or steal from my neighbor.

Paradoxically, when I pray or when I sin, I contract. I shrink. I become smaller.

This religious stuff is always tricky like this.

When I commit a real good – or should I say – real bad – sin, I end up humbled, rejected, cut down, and reduced.

When I reach out for God, I meet greatness - but end up feeling small – empty in God’s presence.

But I also can now fit through the eye of the needle.

I can now become filled up on the other side with the riches of the kingdom.

Jesus taught all this.

Jesus is God – and emptied himself – when he became one of us and emptied himself even more by becoming our servant. [Cf. Philippians 2: 5b-11]

He was put down, contradicted, crucified, for what he was telling us to do – to do the same thing – but now Christ fills the universe.