Reflection for July 23rd 2011

The first half of life should lead one to become a better law-observing person whatever one’s tradition might be. Yet staying in the first half of life too long gives the ego so much satisfaction that the vast majority of people remain there, as if it were the whole point. Laws serve us well at the beginning and everybody must go through this stage and internalize these values. But as Paul says, laws are only the “nursemaid” (Galatians 3:24) to get us started. The fact that we have not taught this makes me think that history, up to now, has been largely “first half of life.” God did not create us to obey laws but to attend a banquet. Jesus makes that absolutely clear.

In the first half of life we are creating our “container.” The second half of life begins when we discover the real contents that the container was meant to hold! Jesus is saying the same thing in Mark 2:22: in order to hold the new wine we need new wineskins, and if we do not create new wineskins, we lose the wine and the wineskins both! Do we have a big enough container to hold all that God has created, and all that God is doing in us? The second half of life container can hold much more than structures and laws. It begins to enjoy the wedding banquet itself.