Feel Like Running Away?

What do you have the urge to run away from? 

Is it your job, your marriage, your children? Or maybe you are trying to escape yourself, the things you know about yourself that no one else knows, such as your sins, or your dark thoughts or tendencies.

Thomas Merton wrote about "wrestling" with his own darkness and discovered that he didn't so much need to run away from himself as he needed to turn to the light of God.

He put it this way:

"It is sufficient to turn away from my darkness to His light. I do not have to run away from myself; it is sufficient that I find myself, not as I have made myself, by my own stupidity, but as He has made me in His wisdom and remade me in His infinite mercy." 

The key here, I think, is that we recognize how wonderfully God made each of us and that while through our own sins we taint that beauty . . .

"it is His will . . . that my life should reflect the radiance of His love and my whole being repose in His peace. Then will I truly know Him, since I am in Him and He is truly in me." (Thomas Merton, "Thoughts in Solitude")

In other words, we don't need to wrestle, we don't need to escape, we simply need to turn to God and rediscover his beauty in us. He made us, we didn't make ourselves, and knowing that he can remake us, gives us hope that we can reflect his love.

While at times you might feel the need to run away from your life (or the people in it), look closer for the light of God, his wisdom and mercy. It is there, in his light, that you will find freedom from your own sins and the peace you so much desire.

I hope you are having a fruitful Lent.

Janet Cassidy
Email me at:  jmctm2@gmail.com

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