Sweet Words But Distant Hearts

It's easy to say the right things. But we can say the correct words and have our hearts very much distant from love.

It’s easy to do. Say the words but forget the meaning.

There’s an old joke about an elderly couple sitting together on the porch when the wife says to her husband, “Honey, why don’t you say you love me anymore?” The old man told his wife of many years, “Well, I said I loved you when we got married. If I change my mind, I’ll let you know.”

Yeah, that guy is sleeping on the couch!

But we can get in the bad habit of just saying the words and our actions betray that uncomfortable truth that we really are living the way we are talking. It’s a common human weakness, but it has terrible consequences if we ignore the distance between our words and our actions. The fact that too many times our children see us saying we are faithful Christians and then watching our lives can explain much of the reason why we are struggling to keep our children connected to the Church.

No wonder the Church constantly calls us to pray, “Lord, have mercy!”

These lessons from the Old Testament for us during Great Lent are powerful invitations to see God’s timeless wisdom meant for us even in our modern age!

Look at our lesson today in Isaiah 29:13-23: