Withholding

Though it may seem cute to imagine a little boy stuffing his face with cake so as not to share it, I cannot help by feel it is not cute at all when I do this with my time and my talents in relation to my Beloved…

Peter Walks on Water (Philipp Otto Runge)

My husband tells a funny story about when he was a little boy.

When he was a little boy, his father (may God rest his soul) used to sometimes take him to work with him.  When I went to work with his father he would sometimes sit and eat his lunch with the other men at the job sites (his father worked in construction and stone quarry).  My husband recounts some advice that he was given by one of the men who worked with his father, while they were eating their lunch one day.

My husband was eating his lunch and enjoying the meal when the man sitting next to him asked him if he could have a taste of the meal.  Now, my husband grew up in Lebanon.  And in Lebanon (and in the Middle East) there is great emphasis on sharing food.  In fact, it is the height of bad manners to be greedy or stingy with food.  It is a sign of great inhospitality to refuse to offer someone food or to offer a small portion of food.  We like to make sure that there is plenty of food – and we certainly never prevent anyone from sharing our food.  In this case, my husband really did not want to share his food, and the man knew this and was teasing him.  So, he told my husband a little trick.  He advised that we should always eat our favourite part of the meal first.  In this way if someone asked to share our food, the nice food would be all gone and we would not have to share anything with anyone.

Now, this is a funny little story, but it reminds me of how I offer things to God.  You see, I hold things back?  I take the best for myself and leave the scraps for God to ask about.  And just as this is terrible inhospitality to people in the Middle East, it is an even worse inhospitable offence in my soul!

And yet the most important part of my life should be God Himself.  The first and most important sacrifice should be offered to God and it is my miserable soul who should be afforded the scraps.  But instead of doing this, I am left allocating my time and talent to the rubbish of the world.  To things that will go – things that will pass away before my Earthly life is even over – I am willing to withhold from my Beloved.  I will give Him the left over of my time – after my work or my family.  Instead of putting God at the centre of my life, I place Him on the outskirts – banishing Him to where it is no inconvenience to me to keep Him there…

And I have been thinking about that today as I have been thinking about my husband as a little boy.  And though it may seem cute to imagine a little boy stuffing his face with cake so as not to share it, I cannot help by feel it is not cute at all when I do this with my time and my talents in relation to my Beloved…

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.