POLISHING OUR STONES
Sometimes we need a magic wand, something supernatural and beyond us, to come and defeat what cannot be defeated. Our faith tradition abounds with rich images of hope, images that point precisely towards where that magic wand lies.
One such image is the image of David and Goliath; an image of how good stands before evil, justice before selfishness, sensitivity before brutality, tenderness before what’s callous, blood and flesh before iron and concrete.
That image, David before Goliath, the child before the brute giant, depicts how God’s cause always stands before the world – seemingly hopelessly over-matched, a child before a giant, the naive in front of the sophisticated, tender skin against iron.
When David reached into his shepherd’s pouch and took out a sling and a smooth pebble, you can be sure that he wasn’t doing that for the first time. As a shepherd, in the fields by himself, he would have spent many hours practicing with his slingshot, countless hours searching for just the right pebbles, and many more hours palming these pebbles to get to know their exact feel, to smooth off their edges so that their path would be straight, to make them an extension of himself.
That’s our task too. Long before we walk onto the battlefield to confront the giant, we need to spend long, lonely hours palming and polishing what’s in our shepherd’s pouch – prayer, the sacraments, our faith traditions.
These are David’s pebbles, the magic wand, our weapons against the giant. We need, through many hours, solitary and with others, to palm them, press them, and give them the feel of our hands, the smell of our skin, so that when we fling them at the giant, they will find the chink in the armour of what’s senseless, brute, iron, mindless, opposed to God.
Such is the way of hope and, even if we doesn’t save the world, it can save our own sanity.
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ABOUT RON ROLHEISER, OMI
Ronald Rolheiser, a Roman Catholic priest and member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, is president of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas.
He is a community-builder, lecturer and writer. His books are popular throughout the English-speaking world and his weekly column is carried by more than seventy newspapers worldwide.
For more information please visit his website.