Dependence on God

There was an expression I heard often when I was young. “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” I don’t hear that much anymore, but it still rings true in the life of the Church. When life gets difficult, people of faith get going to Church and God, and blessings flow.

Today the Church commemorates Saint Joseph the Hymnographer. He excelled in faith during the Iconoclastic Period. He was forced to move from place to place to avoid persecution by the Muslims. He died in peace, but not after having written countless pages of hymns the Church still offers to God in worship today.

Saint Joseph never gave up his dependence on God. God never gave up on Saint Joseph. Many of us would either remain silent about God, or worse, betray God in the face of constant persecution. Saint Joseph gives us another way.

During Great Lent we can get ‘a taste’ of what it means to struggle for the faith. With concerted effort we learn to depend upon God for everything. During Great Lent this takes the form of fasting foods and Lenten disciplines. But that is just a training ground. We are just getting started.

Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth.  And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him went into the ark, to escape the waters of the flood.  Of clean animals, and of animals that are not clean, and of birds, and of everything that creeps on the ground, two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah, as God had commanded Noah.

Genesis 7.6-9

We can’t imagine what it must have been like for Noah and his family to depend upon God during the Flood. We have all the ‘comforts’ we can imagine. We have come to depend upon God for nothing. Great Lent gives us a chance to change that in our lives.

As our fasting and Lenten disciplines develop over time, we learn that life is more than just air conditioning and highway express lanes. Just as so many saints enter the desert to live in ascetic dependence upon God, Great Lent becomes our desert.

I know it doesn’t feel like a desert with so many ‘Lenten friendly’ food options. If it doesn’t feel like a desert, we haven’t turned to God yet. It is like Noah seeing the waters rising on the horizon but not yet getting into the Ark. We know we need God. We just know how quite yet.

If you are wise, you are wise for yourself; if you scoff, you alone will bear it.  A foolish woman is noisy; she is wanton and knows no shame.  She sits at the door of her house, she takes a seat on the high places of the town, calling to those who pass by, who are going straight on their way,  “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!” And to him who is without sense she says,  “Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.”  But he does not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.

Proverbs 9.12-18

Our reading from Proverbs can shed some light on our struggle to depend upon God. The world is constantly tempting us to turn away from God’s path. We are tempted by beauty and comfort. I can’t imagine Noah and his family were very comfortable on the Ark with all the animals.

Especially in our contemporary American lifestyle, Great Lent can help us turn away from focusing on comfort. Eating basic food for basic nourishment rather than lavish meals for pleasure is a start.

Noah could not have been saved without depending upon God. The Church would not have thousands of hymns to offer God if Saint Joseph had not depended upon God. As we continue our Great Lenten Journey, I invite you to consider the comfort level of your life.

Are you ‘wise to yourself’ or do you depend upon God. Only a fool is wise to himself. Spend the rest of Great Lent learning to depend upon God and you will be blessed. I pray you won’t have to move from place to place like Saint Joseph or live on a boat like Noah. But you will be blessed.