19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Our readings for 19th Sunday of Ordinary Time are:

1. 1 Kings 19:9a, 11-13a
2. Psalms 85:9, 10, 11-12, 13-14
3. Romans 9:1-5
4. Matthew 14:22-33

• The sounds of silence ...
• Elijah ended up on Horeb because he was on the run from King Ahab, his wife Jezebel, the priests of Baal, seemingly the whole of Israel.
• Has there ever been a time in your life when the day to day, the immediate concerns made it impossible to concentrate on the big picture?
• Which of those distractions was the most difficult to get past?
• How did you manage to get your concentration back onto the right track?
• Where was God in all of that?

• If you want peace, work for justice
• That quote is attributed to Pope Paul VI.
• If he had said "if you want peace, pray for justice", how would that have changed the sense of the quote?
• What do you think are the connections/dependencies between peace and justice?
• Which is more effective at bringing about peace: better military hardware, or humility?

• Friends don't let friends live without Christ ...
• Have you ever thought to yourself "that person over there would be a whole lot happier with Jesus at the center of their life?"
• When was the last time that you told someone that?
• Why does that seem/feel so unnatural?
• Do you even believe that to be true?

• Sorry Jesus, these are new Gucci shoes ...
• For some reason, walking on water seems to utterly define power and authority.
• Why do you think that Peter wanted Jesus to ask him to come on the water?
• What do you think enabled Peter to do that walk on the water?
• Why did he sink?
• When was the last time that you "walked on water" in any sense?

Preparation for Reconciliation:

1. Which are the loudest voices in my life?  Which are of God?
2. What have I done to bring about justice in this past week in the world that I live in?
3. What have I done to bring another true happiness?
4. How much can I say: 
5. "Dance like nobody's watching; love like you've never been hurt. Sing like nobody's listening; live like it's heaven on earth." -Mark Twain

Hey, wait, at least leave your bucket!

That Peter, he never had any real staying power.
We got stuck in the middle of the lake, with a storm
Like none of us had ever seen before.

Boat shipping water faster and faster.
Meanwhile, our pathetic attempts at getting the water out
Were getting slower and slower as we tired.

Then Peter takes off after Jesus over the water.
That's fine for him, but the rest of us are stuck in this sinking boat,
With nothing between us and great beyond but our own hands and these buckets.

Every pair of hands needed for bailing.
Backs breaking from the strain,
Hope of survival ebbing with our poor foundering ship.

Skies black, waves high, wind shrieking.
Death circling us like a bloated vulture.
And Peter decides to take a walk in all of that chaos.

Then, as we watched, he started to sink along with us.
So it didn't look as though he was any better off really.
Except for that one moment of glory.

Forever after, I wondered what it was like to shed everything,
Step out of the sinking ship of life and cast myself totally on Jesus.
To feel the strong grip of His hand pulling me back to life.

Maybe it was worth the risk of losing everything,
Just to depend on Jesus and no one, nothing else.
Maybe.

Shalom!