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I hope you enjoyed your March Break
Got some much-needed rest
Sleep, eat, relax
What a wonderful and blessed time we had at the retreat
Some of you wrote beautiful reflections
Time to connect, learn more about yourself and God
Our theme was “The ‘Me’ I Am Today BECOMING The ‘Me’ I Will Be Tomorrow”
We learned that life is about a continual process and journey of BECOMING
The me I will be tomorrow is always different from the me I am today
The question is: what will that journey of becoming be like
Will it be one filled with stress, anxiety, fear and uncertainty?
Or will it be a journey of trust, faith, hope and joy?
As you head back to school and back to everyday life, I want to leave you with God’s Word planted in your heart
I want this Word of God to be your foundation in your journey of becoming
At the retreat, we learned that when God encounters us, the first thing that happens is that our bare, naked selves become exposed
Everything that we are grateful for, and the joys and hopes are in our inmost being
But also, our greatest fears, anxieties and insecurities are in our inmost being
So also our pains and hurts
We also see our ugliness, the self that is opposite of the front we put out to the world
As humans, our first reaction is to avoid confronting our inmost selves, because it is too scary and too devastating to see our real, true selves
You know, there’s no other relationship that really exposes who you are than your relationship with your family
With your family, your true tendencies come to the surface, don’t they?
Our anger, our meanness, our indifference – there’s no place to really hide it
In my marriage, I’ve had to come to grips with much of my own ugliness
Usually I want to avoid confronting it, and try to blame the issues on my wife
That’s often the easier thing to do – to try and blame the other person
It’s very difficult to honestly come face to face with our real, inner issues
But we also learned that if we have not really confronted our real, inmost selves, then we have not truly encountered God
Because God only meets us at the most real level, which is our real, inmost self
Others may know the outer self we present to the world, but God is not interested in that outer self
God only cares about our true, real, inner self
In today’s passage, the prophet Jeremiah talks about a new covenant that God will make with God’s people
A covenant is a promise, an agreement
So this is a promise and agreement that God is making
“I will put My Teaching into their inmost being and inscribe it upon their hearts.”
You know that inmost, real self?
That inmost self where our pain, hurts, fears and insecurities lie?
That inmost self we most often want to avoid and run away from?
This is the very place where God will place His teaching and inscribe it upon our hearts
We learned at the retreat that this teaching is the words from God that “you are okay”
That you are loved just as you are
That God delights in you
That God wants to heal you, free you from your fears and lead you in the life that God has planned for you
God wants to seal that teaching in your heart!
More than that, the prophet says: “for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”
When we really know deep down how ugly and bad we are, it weighs us down
It takes away our confidence, because we don’t think we’re adequate
But at that deepest and most real place of yourself, where all your ugliness is made bare, God will tell us there, at that level, that He forgives all of our shortcomings and remembers our sin no more
In other words, God says that everything bad about you is now forgotten
You can start again with a clean slate
Whether we know it or not, our fears, our insecurities, our pain, our hurt, our guilt – they all weigh us down and prevent us from becoming the people God wants us to be
But the good news here is that God will remove everything that weighs us down
We can take the journey of becoming with freedom!
This is what it means to know God
Jeremiah is saying that when that weight is removed, we will truly know God
This passage was told to Jews who had lost everything after being conquered by Babylon
Babylon came and crushed the land of Judah
They destroyed their Temple – the symbol of their identity as God’s chosen people
They were taken from their land to a far away place in Babylon as exiles
They were utterly devastated
But in that darkness and despair, Jeremiah spoke these words of hope
In your own lives, you will face many treacherous paths in life
You will hear so many voices telling you that you don’t measure up
You will hear so many voices telling you that UNLESS you achieve this or achieve that, that you are really nobody
You will be tempted to present a happy and confident face to the world, even if deep down you’re weighed down by unresolved pain, or fears and insecurities
“Then I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”
God makes a promise to all of us here – the youth of St. Timothy
God will be our God, and WE shall be His people
God will meet us in our innermost being if we allow Him, if we invite Him in
And there God will teach us that we are okay
That we are loved
That we are somebody because our Creator has told us so
And God will be our God, and we will be God’s people
God has a wonderful intention for your life
God wants to lead you in becoming the person God wants you to be
There is so much need in the world for good, kind and courageous people
And I believe God will use many of you in wonderful ways
But it starts deep inside of each of us
We must meet God at our most real, innermost being
That is where our transformation truly begins
We we meet God at our innermost selves and sear His teaching on our hearts, that we are okay, then we can begin a wonderful journey with God of becoming who we’re meant to be
May God lead us in this blessed journey of Becoming!
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