Harden Not Your Hearts

23 Mar

Oh, that today you would hear his voice:
“Harden not your hearts as at Meribah,
as in the day of Massah in the desert,
Where your fathers tempted me;
they tested me though they had seen my works.”  (Ps 95:8-9)

In today’s second reading, we hear that “Hope does not disappoint.”

What disappoints our God, on the other hand, is a lack of hope.

We are called by the Lord to be a hopeful people, to look ahead, to embrace all the possibilities that come to us from our God.

It is hard to embrace those possibilities when we look behind, when we grumble, when we are not satisfied with what we have been given.

That was the state of the Israelites as told to us in the first reading from the Book of Exodus.  They looked to their past and grumbled to Moses while they were in the desert.  They, apparently, had forgotten all the ills from which they had been delivered.  Instead, they grumbled against God for their present lot in life.  Moses had told them that they were on a journey.  They could not see what was ahead.  All they saw was their present condition.

It is often that way with us as well.  We fail to look ahead at all the promise that God has put into our lives.  Instead, we focus on our present condition, often comparing it to our past, and lamenting what we have and have not.  We become dissatisfied  with what we have.  We grumble and complain and want more.

In our grumbling condition, our eyes become clouded to what the Lord is providing us and our hearts become hardened toward the Lord.  We see less what He is doing rather than seeing clearly all that He does for us.

A cloudy vision and a hardened heart is a recipe for disaster.

Harden not your hearts today.

FAITH ACTION:  In prayer today, ask the Lord to help you to see all that He does for you so that your heart may not harden toward Him.