No Happy Ending In This World (March 28)

The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame. Isaiah 50:7

Many people live in the conscious or unconscious expectation that eventually things will get better; wars, hunger, poverty, oppression, and exploitation will vanish; and all people will live in harmony. Their lives and work are motivated by that expectation. When this does not happen in their lifetimes, they are often disillusioned and experience themselves as failures.

But Jesus doesn't support such an optimistic outlook. He foresees not only the destruction of his beloved city of Jerusalem, but also a world full of cruelty, violence, and conflict. For Jesus there is no happy ending in this world. The challenge of Jesus is not to solve all the world's problems before the end of time but to remain faithful at all cost.

Are your expectations grounded in Christian faith?

And from Thomas Merton ...

Merton's Voice: 

This, then, is our desert: to live facing despair, but not to consent. 

To trample it down under hope in the Cross. 

To wage war against despair unceasingly. 

That war is our wilderness. 

If we wage it courageously, we will find Christ at our side. 

If we cannot face it, we will never find Him.



Merton, Thomas. Thoughts in Solitude. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999, p. 8

Prayer: 

But you, O Lord, do not be far away! O my help, come quickly to my aid!

(NRSV Ps 22: 19)