I will give them a new heart and put a new spirit within them; I will remove the stony heart from their bodies, and replace it with a natural heart, so that they will live according to my statutes, and observe and carry out my ordinances; thus they shall be my people and I will be their God.
Ezekiel 11: 19, 20
I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you, taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving you natural hearts. I will put my spirit within you and make you live by my statutes, careful to observe my decrees.
Ezekiel 36:25-27
Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: See! I will bring spirit into you, that you may come to life. I will put sinews upon you, make flesh grow over you, cover you with skin, and put spirit in you so that you may come to life and know that I am the LORD.
Ezekiel 37: 5, 6
My spiritual director tells me that sometimes the Lord has to tell her three times before she hears a word that has given her. I think this might be the case to me, in regards to the following three Scriptures. Over the past few weeks, I have heard all three over and over again. Of course, I’m not the only one who has been hearing them, as they are in the Liturgy of the Hours also. Still I think God may be trying to tell me something and also, of course, all the Church.
So what is God trying to tell me? I’m not completely sure, although I have some inkling. As I read the last Scripture this morning, I thought of my running and how I need to be revitalized there. For the last few weeks, I have been lax to the point of nonexistence with my running. I had been waking up at 5:30 to pray the Liturgy and then go for a run, usually by 6:30 after breakfast. The last few weeks, though, I have fallen off schedule — perhaps because I had decided to not run/hike/walk in a 24.9 mile trail hike next weekend, Oct. 4 because I was out of shape.
Of course, since I have decided to run in a marathon on June 6, 2009, three days before my 40th birthday, I have not been getting up any earlier and in fact, have been staying up later, writing blog posts later and later into the night. I think this last Scripture anyway might be God trying to tell me He will put his spirit within me so that I may come to life and know that He is the Lord– literally, awaken to run.
Yet not just to run, but to “come to life” or awaken and “bring spirit into me” with His living Word, then out to “face the world.”
All day long a song that we sing in chorus (I’m a member of a men’s chorus in our town) has been going through my head called The Awakening by Joseph M. Martin:
Awake, awake, my soul and sing!
The time for praise has come.
The silent of the night has passed:
a new day has begun.
In turn, what is God to trying to tell all of us? Maybe that He is the one who will put a new heart within us, a heart of flesh and not of stone, a new spirit. It is not by our power but His, if we harden not our hearts and allow him to do so. Only He can bring us to life– and does– every day, every morning. So why not arise with His praise on our lips? It is right to give Him thanks and praise.
Lord, let me (us) let You bring Your spirit into me (us), that I (we) may come to life each morning, each day and know that You are the Lord. Amen.
