Recently Maria has been learning her alphabet. She loves the letter W and is very happy to pick it out on the pages of various story books. She also likes M, which she generally calls "upside down W," since I explained M as looking like an upside down W. Last night however she looked and an M and said M leaving me hopeful that my teaching tactics aren't totally wrong.
She likes to sing the Alphabet Song as well. Her version goes something like this: "abcd...xoy...w..xoy...z...now I know...abcd's...sing with me!" One day as she was singing this it struck me..."she knows the beginning and the end of the song! ...the beginning and the end of the alphabet!" This was a principal we learned in one of my psychology classes...people tend to pay more attention to/remember the first and last things in a list (or in a speech or series of events). I know this principal has some fancy name, but I recall it right now. Must be something I learned in the middle of my schooling.
In any case, this human bias towards attending only to the beginning and the ending seems to me to play out in our spiritual lives as well. Even one of our names for God reflects this bias... Alpha and Omega. Not that there is anything wrong with this name for God, for He is the beginning and the end of all things. But some people focus only on these extremes.
Some focus on God as the beginning... as the Great Author of All Creation, who sets the world in motion and then sits back and watches it turn, without becoming involved in the daily lives of the people that He has created. For others the end of all things takes precedence and they end up with a morbid focus on the end times, studying prophecy, building stockpiles, etc. They see God only as the Supreme Judge who will return at the end of time to punish the wicked and reward the good.
But I think that it's important to remember, especially now at the beginning of Lent that God is not just the Alpha and the Omega, but He is also everything in between. He didn't just come down at the beginning to start things up and then leave until the end of time. He is intimately involved in every moment of every day for every person on this earth. All we have to do is tune in to His presence with us.
Lent is the perfect time for us to shift our focus. As we pray and fast and sacrifice, let us keep in mind the God who is with us... the one who walked this earth and calls us to follow Him into the desert to be purified. To once again repent of our sins and come into an ever closer and deeper relationship with Jesus, the one who gave His life so that we might always know His presence. For God is not just the Alpha and Omega, He also Emmanuel, God with us, and He wants us to turn and follow Him once again.
No comments:
Post a Comment