This is a week to reflect upon what it means to be constantly alert to the ways God chooses to reveal God-self to us. - Photo:canva.com
The predominant theme for this first week of Advent 2023 is “stay awake”.
This is a week to reflect upon what it means to be constantly alert to the ways God chooses to reveal God-self to us. Today, as I reflect on the readings of today – Isaiah 11:1-10 and Luke 10:21-24 – I think of how the presence of God is seen in the expansion of our imaginations. This is why some politicians would consider prophets to be particularly dangerous. To imagine, as the prophet Isaiah does, that hope for the future comes from the least among all the peoples or tribes and to see that future as one that views the animal kingdom as one of gentle co-existence, one in which a child can venture without any fear to the extent of even extending her hand into a cobra’s lair to tickle its underbelly, is so wonderfully subversive. It is also like Jesus’ invitation to allow for a childlike innocence to capture our imagination and to see Jesus in our midst in ways that even our ancestors could not have imagined.
Let us not give up on the future. Let us not allow cynical scepticism trap us into believing that our world is not worth saving or, even worse, to believe that we do not have a battle on our hands. We’ve allowed heavy-handed capitalists to gouge out the life-giving soil of our earth and pollute the air that we breathe to the extent that we are being challenged to live out our calling to be prophetic in this day and age.
It is still possible to save our planet and we need to pray for those gathered at the COP28 - United Nations Climate Change - meeting and trust that they can have the imagination and the power of effective persuasion to convince our world leaders that time is running out.
Columban Fr Tom Rouse is living at St Columbans, Lower Hutt, New Zealand.
