Week 50—Thursday Matthew 27:3-8
Matthew 27:3-8
EXAMPLES OF NOT BEING ALIGNED WITH
THE FUNDAMENTAL TENDENCIES OF THE UNIVERSE
We pause for another look at the need to belong. A German war orphan was shown a picture in a G.I.’s wallet—his girlfriend. The orphan said rather sadly, “I had a picture in my wallet too. But he is dead. It was Hitler. I loved and obeyed him, but he is gone. Have you a picture to put into my wallet?” His family was gone, his hero was gone, everything was gone, could we offer a picture to put in that orphan’s wallet? Yes, Jesus Christ, the express image of his heavenly Father—the only picture that would meet his total need. For the picture would be a Person—and alive!
A priest of a shrine in which forty-nine generations had served as priests said to a missionary friend of mine, “We’re defunct. The shrines are dead forms. My oldest son, who is very brilliant, should succeed me in this priesthood, but I’m breaking a line of forty-nine generations, 1,500 years, and am sending him to a Christian college. The future belongs in that direction. I am sending my second son who is of no account into the priesthood.” “The future belongs in that direction,” for in that direction “the fundamental tendencies of the universe” have come to embodiment in Jesus.
A kamakazi (suicide) pilot who was converted at midnight said in one of our Ashrams in Japan, “I was ready to die for the Emperor, but now I am even more ready to die for Christ, for I feel a greater loyalty for him than I did for the Emperor.” The pilot’s insight now showed him that “the fundamental tendencies of the universe” were away from the Emperor and toward Christ.
Disillusionment with the half-gods is making people align themselves more and more with Jesus in whom the wave of the future is seen. The half-gods will go, and God, the Incarnate, will get people’s allegiances.
O Lord Christ, we take our roads with dead ends and, frustrated, turn back to you who are the Way. We thank you that we do not have to follow false trails forever, for you, the Way, are open. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I go singing down the days and years, for I am on the Way.