Lenten Reflection: Time

“My times are in your hand.” (Psalm 31:15)

What would our lives really look like if the words of this Psalm where true?  If we wholeheartedly put our times in God’s hands with complete faith and trust, what would our lives be like?

One of the reasons St. Benedict asked His Monks to pray the Divine Office is to sanctify time.  Each of the various hours of the day are marked by praying the Psalms.  The Psalms are the heart of the Offices.  Through the words we pour everything within us in unity with the whole Church throughout the world into God’s hands.  The joys, celebrations, tragedies and sufferings of the Church and the world flow from the heart of the monastic who is praying them and through the “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit….” that concludes each Psalm and Canticle, our prayer becomes one with the prayers of Christ who is at the right hand of God.

The Holy Spirit tells us through the words of Psalm 31:15 to take to heart our need to let go and trust in God.  It is among the hardest things to do in our world of gadgets designed to control everything for and around us.  Yet, even those things are hardly a match for what goes on in the real world of life.  Faith and trust are beyond time, space and our limited world view.  They are gifts of God’s initiative given to us as God’s earnest desire to draw us to a closer relationship with God.

May all of us take some of that time to put our times in God’s hands for real.  May we all be given the grace to accept and let go, so that we walk by faith and not only by sight.  We do not have to have all of the right answers.  God is our reliable help in times of trouble, as we place them all in God’s hands.

Amen.

Br. Anselm Philip King-Lowe, n/OSB