O Adonai

18 Dec

“O Sacred Lord of ancient Israel, who showed yourself to Moses in the burning bush, who gave him the holy law on Sinai mountain: Come, stretch out your mighty hand to set us free.”

If anyone needs some good, old fashioned rescuing, it would be us!

We have been created in God’s image and likeness and yet we have cast that aside long ago, allowing original sin to enter into the world.  Now, we are born into a sinful world and we often make our decisions based upon faulty assumptions and selfish motivations.  We are like sheep without a shepherd.  We need order in our lives.

Ironically, the only way we can have order is if we accept laws.  But you know how that goes.  There is one heck of a lot of lawlessness in our world.  We see it on a regular basis:  people putting items in their pockets at the stores and not paying for them, people running stoplights and stop signs because they do not want to stop, as well as people speeding and weaving in and out of traffic.  Let’s not even go into the shootings and other violence that often takes place around us.

As we so frequently break man-made laws, we also break the laws of God.  There are many times that we make other things or other people into our gods.  We lie, we cheat, we steal.  We dishonor ourselves, our parents, authority figures, and God.  In short, humanity is a real mess.

That is not to say there is no help for us.  Actually, there is a lot of help available and it is all in God.  O Adonai (O Sacred Lord) is the “O Antiphon” for December 18.  It calls upon the Lord of Israel to come and rescue His people.  As I opened this reflection, I close it:  If anyone needs some good, old fashioned rescuing, it would be us!

FAITH ACTION:  Reflect upon the following verse and ask our Sacred Lord to come into your life and bring order to any chaos that may be in you or among your family or friends.

O Come, O Come, O Lord of might,
who to your tribes on Sinai’s height
in ancient times did give the law,
in cloud, and majesty, and awe.