Mtr Mary Trainor

Dear Friend,

“In him we live and move and have our being.” Acts 17:28

The Apostle Paul is on the move. One of the Daily Office readings for today is a selection from The Acts of the Apostles, which finds Paul in Athens, where he encounters a multiplicity of religious thought and practice. “A forest of idols” is how Athens at that time has been described. (R.E. Wycherley)

Talking with residents eventually earns Paul a summons to explain himself before the government body that can decide whether he can continue his teachings.

Paul reasons before them: All those altars dedicated to an unknown God? I know who that God is, and so do you. It is “In him [that] we live and move and have our being.”

I don’t know about you, but I can watch an aquarium for hours. Plants undulating in bubbling water, treasure chests opening and closing in the soft flow, a gravel floor, rocks. And fish. All manner of fish and other aquatic fauna. A complete system. Everything necessary for support is present. Fish don’t aspire to jump over to another aquarium or river or ocean. They have what they need in this one closed system. It is their whole world. Just as the one God, the God who raised Jesus from the dead, is our whole world.

Whenever I stray from God’s embrace, I am fully and sometimes painfully aware that I have wandered away from that which sustains me. Everything is more difficult, if it is even possible to do at all. Living, moving, having my being—ordinarily gracious gifts of relationship with God—become struggles for me at the outer edges, in the corners, of belief. Maybe it is like that for you, too.

But here is good news: The Lenten path, even though sometimes winding and steep, can lead us from the edges of faith back to the heart of God.

Mtr. Mary