<\/p>\n
So, what does St. Paul and the Psalmist mean when they say \u201cHarden not your Hearts\u201d?<\/p>\n
Well, sometimes we can be so steeped in our every-day problems that our hearts just are not any longer motivated by our Faith and Hope in the Lord.\u00a0 It is then that our hearts are effectively hardened.<\/p>\n
Such was the case with the Israelis in the desert.\u00a0 They were parched, as was the land they were travelling through.\u00a0 Water was at a premium.\u00a0 And even though the Lord had rescued them from Pharaoh and the Egyptians and cared for them for 40 years they didn\u2019t trust the Lord\u2019s promise to care for them going forward.\u00a0 They were wholly and totally focused on their immediate needs, and not on Faith and Hope in the Lord.\u00a0 Their Faith was so weak that their hearts were numb, even hardened, to the big picture of the promised land that would come to those who trusted and followed the Lord\u2019s commands.\u00a0 And so Paul quotes this famous Psalm and warns the Christian community of the same trap- a trap in which one forsakes the living God.\u00a0 When you fall into such a trap, you despair of hope, and abandon your Faith.<\/p>\n
Does it ever happen to us?\u00a0 Well, our Faith and hopes were passed to many of us when we were young.\u00a0 We came to believe; we resolved to dedicate our lives to doing God\u2019s will, and our hope was in a future in God\u2019s Kingdom.\u00a0 But then life happened.\u00a0 And in the midst of the turmoil of life, we find ourselves, in a figurative sense, having spent 40 years in a desert wandering around in what seems like an aimless pursuit.\u00a0 Sometimes we have a tendency to give up hope when the latest trial arrives our way, the straw that breaks the camel\u2019s back so to speak.\u00a0 It could be an illness, a financial problem, or a relationship problem.\u00a0 But instead of trusting and hoping in the Lord, we look to our own devices, and forget about hope and faith.<\/p>\n
The leper in Biblical times was a forsaken person.\u00a0 He was shunned by society because it was an infectious and incurable disease.\u00a0 It would be easy to despair in such a case, to abandon all hope, and lose Faith.\u00a0 But the leper in the Gospel had Faith and Hope in Jesus.\u00a0 And he was rewarded for it.<\/p>\n
That is a lesson all of us need to remember.\u00a0 No matter how bad things get, we must never lose hope and Faith in God.\u00a0 Rather, when the going gets tough, open your hearts to the Lord.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thursday of the First Week in Ordinary Time Heb 3: 7-14; Mark 1: 40-45 Dc. Larry Brockman So, what does St. Paul and the Psalmist mean when they say \u201cHarden not your Hearts\u201d? Well, sometimes we can be so steeped in our every-day problems that our hearts just are not any longer motivated by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[198,197],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=300"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":301,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300\/revisions\/301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}