Tuesday Lent Four

“Happy are they whom you instruct, O Lord! *

whom you teach out of your law;

To give them rest in evil days, *

until a pit is dug for the wicked.

For the LORD will not abandon his people, *

nor will he forsake his own.

For judgment will again be just, *

and all the true of heart will follow it.

Who rose up for me against the wicked? *

who took my part against the evildoers?

If the LORD had not come to my help, *

I should soon have dwelt in the land of silence.

As often as I said, "My foot has slipped," *

your love, O LORD, upheld me.

When many cares fill my mind, *

your consolations cheer my soul.”

Psalm 94, Tuesday Lent Four, Evening Prayer, the Daily Office, Year One

The truest happiness I can know, joy, comes from the realization that God’s law, while not easy to live, is simple to understand: love God in our loving God’s creation, in caring for the sick, poor, outcast, prisoners and our enemies. This love we too should come to realize in ourselves, we should strive to ammend those aspects of our persona which inhibit our capacity to love and live out compassion. “Evil” is in the places wherein people hold an absence of regard for the suffering of the world. Again, it is the holding, that is maintaining, an absence of regard for the suffering, either in ignoring it’s presence around us, or worse, in the manifestation of it. This is the difference between “sin” and “evil”. Sin, as Paul reminds us, is missing the mark of love’s measure, through a transgression, our inhibiting the growth of Christ in us. Evil is the absence of love’s capacity in the human heart and mind, the absence of empathy and compassion in an absolute objective of intention. We in Christ must stand against evil. Christ is calling us to act. We need to allow ourselves to intentionally follow Christ's nature, as our objective, and rush in to fill the vacuum of evil in the world with compassion, care and consolation.