Tag: Jeremiah

Read Jeremiah 31:31-34.

Many of my conversations with students are about discernment: young adults listening for God’s call and the voice that says “this is the way, walk ye in it” (or something like that). Seminary or medical school? A gap year or straight to the office or onto more academia? What will they do on a small scale or on a large scale that will allow the people around them know the love, generosity, and hope of God? My students want to discover the role they will play in the unfolding of the kindom. Today’s text suggests that there could be no need to teach about God, someday, because everyone will know God. The trick to this is that it’s not so much about you and your decisions, but it is about the way you see others, or what you see in them. In the chapter “Infinite Respect” in Tales of a Magic Monastery, a monk shares a word from his guardian angel: “Whenever anyone comes into this room, my angel whispers ‘Infinite Respect,’ and my spirit prostrates before God in that person.”* If each of us bowed to the Divine in every person we met, there would no longer be a need to teach each other to say “Know the Lord!” because we will all know God already. And we all have a role to play in that.  

Pray

Gracious God, may everyone I meet see the Divine and me, and may I see the Divine in them. Help me to bow before You in every person, and be part of the inbreaking of your kindom. Amen.

Rev. Beatrix Weil

Chaplain, Rhodes College

* Theophane the Monk, Tales of a Magic Monastery (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 37.