Freed from slavery!

In today's first reading, Exodus 12: 37-42, we are told about the night that the Israelites rushed out of Egypt.  To this very day, this night is remembered by the Israelites as "a night of vigil for the Lord".  God kept watch over His people and, at the right time, freed them from the slavery of the Egyptians.  God also keep vigil for us. He knows the chaos or the slavery into which we have fallen or could fall each day. He watches. His timing of freedom for us is the perfect timing.  God is not turned back by what He sees. The turmoil, the chaos, the sinfulness, the divisiveness, the deficits in our lives do not cause God to distance Himself from us. No!  On the contrary, God draws near to us.  God is always near, watching and waiting for the right moment to set us free, to draw us closer and closer to Himself and to others in love.

For 430 years, the Israelites stayed in Egypt! That certainly is a long time!  Where was God, you may ask? God was at their side, empowering them to rise up to the occasion and do what had to be done as slaves.  Was God pleased that they were slaves? Of course not!  God, in no way, wishes us evil or rejoices when life is difficult for us.  God is the liberator, the One who reconciles us with those who  bring us harm or frees us from those who hurt us!  Our freedom may come in a variety of ways. Sometimes as dramatic as with the Israelites' passage out of Egypt. Most times, in less dramatic ways and sometimes we are not even immediately aware that we are being led to freedom.  We simply start making choices by which we let go of attitudes that enslave us to others or that allow others to abuse us.  We begin making choices that give us peace or we keep company with persons who are supportive of us and give us the courage to be our true selves, not another person's slave!

Am I, are you, choosing ways that limit our authentic freedom to be the best person we can be? What behavioral changes do I, do you, need to make to experience greater freedom to serve God with joy and in peace?  What attitudes do I, do you, need to change that will lead us more deeply into the truth of who we are, who God is and how to become our better selves?

Led to the Right Path by Adversity

In today's first reading, Jonah 1: 1-2: 2, 11, Jonah boards a ship going in the opposite direction from Nineveh. God's request of Jonah was that he [s]et out for the great city of Nineveh, and preach against it; their wickedness has come up before me." Jonah runs away from God, as does a little child whose parents are asking of him/her what the little one does not was to do. Just as a parent runs after the fleeing child, so, too, does God follow Jonah. He gets Jonah's attention when a violent storm breaks out and the ship on which he is traveling is in great danger of sinking!  Frightened, the crew, once they believe that Jonah is the problem, throw Jonah overboard. The turbulence ceases. And Jonah is swallowed up by a huge fish and coughed up on the shores of Nineveh, so the story goes--a theological treatise teaching us that God is in charge and that, when we try to escape God's ways and fail to carry out God's will for us, we, too, will experience turbulence--a troubled conscience that deprives us of sleep at night and denies us the peace we crave. We, too, become swallowed up by darkness!

Our only chance of becoming free is that God ultimately rescues us from our waywardness. With Jonah, Jonah 2: 3-5, 8, we pray:

Out of my distress I called upon the Lord,
and he answered me; 
From the midst of the nether world I cried for help,
and you heard my voice.

For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the sea,
and the flood  enveloped me;
All your breakers and your billows
passed me over.

Then I said, "I am banished from our sight!
yet would I again look upon your holy temple."

When my soul fainted within me,
 I remembered the Lord;
My prayer reached you
in your holy temple.