Relentless.\u00c2\u00a0 All during Lent, the Lord’s message is relentless.\u00c2\u00a0 Like this morning- Jeremiah tells us:\u00c2\u00a0 “Cursed is the man who trusts in human beings, who seeks his strength in flesh”. \u00c2\u00a0But then on the other hand:\u00c2\u00a0 “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord”.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now from our youth we are taught to be strong, to be independent, to learn how to live in the world and be successful. \u00c2\u00a0We are encouraged to compete and to savor our success.\u00c2\u00a0 After all, we earned it.\u00c2\u00a0 Perhaps that’s what the rich man in the Gospel was doing.\u00c2\u00a0 He was just enjoying his success.\u00c2\u00a0 He was certainly preoccupied with self and success. \u00c2\u00a0And the Gospel doesn’t say anything that would lead us to believe that the rich man even acknowledged Lazarus. \u00c2\u00a0The rich man effectively built a wall between himself and Lazarus.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
All of us need to be productive in our lives, and there is nothing wrong with that.\u00c2\u00a0 There is nothing wrong with competing and being successful. That’s not Jesus point in the parable.\u00c2\u00a0 But, life does not end with success and comfort in this world.\u00c2\u00a0 We are challenged to grow constantly, even after we have achieved success and not to build walls between ourselves and the problems in the world.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
What success does is give you the capacity to move on to something even more important.\u00c2\u00a0 Because when you are successful, then God has given you time and resources to devote to something else besides making a living like raising the kids, volunteering to help others, or whatever.\u00c2\u00a0 It doesn’t matter whether you are in the prime of life or retired.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lent is a time for all of us to look for the balance in life between living in the world with some degree of comfort and trusting in the Lord when he nudges you to grow- even if it may be a little uncomfortable.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Are you building a wall that isolates you from the rest of the world?\u00c2\u00a0 If you are, remember what happened to the rich man in today’s Gospel.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00c2\u00a0 March 8, 2007 Thursday of Second Week of Lent Jer 17: 5-10; Lk 16: 19-31 Dc. Larry Brockman Relentless.\u00c2\u00a0 All during Lent, the Lord’s message is relentless.\u00c2\u00a0 Like this morning- Jeremiah tells us:\u00c2\u00a0 “Cursed is the man who trusts in human beings, who seeks his strength in flesh”. \u00c2\u00a0But then on the other hand:\u00c2\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34"}],"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=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}