Monday Morning Meditation #18: Arrogance Leads to Destruction

Much like the Jews in the wilderness whose story fills the Book of Numbers, I am still wandering through this book. I found Chapter 16 fascinating because I see so much in common between the ancient Jews and my modern peers. In this chapter, 250 people, led by a man named Korah, rise up against Moses and Aaron, and, by extension, against God. Their complaint is two-fold: (1) they are every bit as holy as Moses and Aaron and should have direct access to God, and (2) Moses (and, again by extension, God) has failed to bring them to a land of milk and honey). This angers God. Moses begs God to have mercy to these men and especially not to punish all the Jews for the sins of a few. When all is over, the Jews as a whole are spared by their leaving the tents of the rebellious leaders, as God demands through Moses, but the 250 who led the rebellion perish for their arrogance.

Reading: Numbers 16

Meditation: While there were a number of emotions floating around the Israeli camps, the one that seemed to permeate the most as I read this chapter is arrogance. Arrogance is an emotion that I see a lot at work. It is the most typical downfall of the junior and senior managers who work in my directorate and the topic that I address most frequently at leadership development meetings that I lead (or that I bring in others to lead). When I arrived at the directorate as its head nearly four years ago, I introduced servant leadership as the leadership approach across divisions -- rather unhappy divisions, I would note. In the past four years, as we all have become more skilled at being servants to our employees and as our employees through our regular reverse evaluations become more skilled at pointing out where we, their managers, are failing to be good servants, the unhappiness in the various divisions has turned to deep-seated satisfaction and happiness that even visitors find palpable. Still, I have a few programs whose managers just don't get it, and their employees are the ones who most frequently take advantage of my open-door policy to complain. The core issue with these managers has little to do with doing things right. Most are very good at doing things right; on the other hand, they, at times, are not willing to do the right thing when it would mean throwing out the rule book. The core issue is their arrogance in thinking that they are "in charge" and, therefore, they determine how things work. They seek power to make themselves feel important. What they don't understand is that

- managers are never truly in charge; the employees who do the critical work are really the ones in charge;

- power held is always weak; power given away (authority granted to employees) grows exponentially in direct proportion to the amount given away;

- when, through the arrogance that emanates from some sense of our greater worth or skill, we hold all leadership decision-making unto ourselves, we deprive God of the opportunity to be the true leader in our organizations for God, as we have seen in this passage, chooses to work through humble and obedient people and, at best, lets arrogant people do themselves in; the reality is that we are not just as good as God at leadership, and when we turn leadership over to God and do it His way, incredibly marvelous things happen, like the development of whole divisions that love each other and love coming to work and even, upon some occasions, real miracles. (I would note here that leadership and relationships in our families and communities does not differ much from leadership and relationships at work.)

There is another aspect to arrogance that comes out of this chapter: the arrogance that comes from expecting God to answer our prayers in the way we want at the time we want, as did those that complained that they had not yet seen the promised land and therefore they had no desire to follow Moses any longer. That arrogance assumes that God is required to live up to our requirements, that we know better than God what is best for us. God not answering prayer in the way they desire is one of the greatest complaints I hear from the teens in my catechism classes. The concept that God sometimes says "no" is something that even adults sometimes have trouble accepting. Yet, often we find a better answer when we don't tell God what to do but simply turn over our problem to Him (and don't take it back). Yes, bad things do happen, and people, including children, do die, but we cannot assume in arrogance to judge that God should have intervened. Only God knows when intervention is warranted and when it is not. We have to trust that He knows what we do not.

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to ask God to show me how to let Him always be in charge and to nudge me to check myself for arrogance regularly, to repent for all those times I have made a leadership or even personal decision without first asking for His guidance, to give thanks for all the many ways He helps me on a daily basis at work and at home, and to offer praise for the way in which He resolves problems in ways that far surpass my abilities and even comprehension.

After that, I will spend some time in contemplation, open to any lessons on humility He wishes to teach me, no matter how difficult they may be. (I have had some experience with His lessons.) I especially welcome His leadership in my life and at my work. I love the way in which He takes care of the people in my directorate, sometimes even protecting them from bad decisions I make when I forget to ask for His help, and in my family and community.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts.

For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of inspirational blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the sidebar of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Have a good day and a good week, remembering in all things to do humbly whatever God requires of you. May you be blessed by His love and His aid as you do so.

Monday Morning Meditation #18: Arrogance Leads to Destruction

Much like the Jews in the wilderness whose story fills the Book of Numbers, I am still wandering through this book. I found Chapter 16 fascinating because I see so much in common between the ancient Jews and my modern peers. In this chapter, 250 people, led by a man named Korah, rise up against Moses and Aaron, and, by extension, against God. Their complaint is two-fold: (1) they are every bit as holy as Moses and Aaron and should have direct access to God, and (2) Moses (and, again by extension, God) has failed to bring them to a land of milk and honey). This angers God. Moses begs God to have mercy to these men and especially not to punish all the Jews for the sins of a few. When all is over, the Jews as a whole are spared by their leaving the tents of the rebellious leaders, as God demands through Moses, but the 250 who led the rebellion perish for their arrogance.

Reading: Numbers 16

Meditation: While there were a number of emotions floating around the Israeli camps, the one that seemed to permeate the most as I read this chapter is arrogance. Arrogance is an emotion that I see a lot at work. It is the most typical downfall of the junior and senior managers who work in my directorate and the topic that I address most frequently at leadership development meetings that I lead (or that I bring in others to lead). When I arrived at the directorate as its head nearly four years ago, I introduced servant leadership as the leadership approach across divisions -- rather unhappy divisions, I would note. In the past four years, as we all have become more skilled at being servants to our employees and as our employees through our regular reverse evaluations become more skilled at pointing out where we, their managers, are failing to be good servants, the unhappiness in the various divisions has turned to deep-seated satisfaction and happiness that even visitors find palpable. Still, I have a few programs whose managers just don't get it, and their employees are the ones who most frequently take advantage of my open-door policy to complain. The core issue with these managers has little to do with doing things right. Most are very good at doing things right; on the other hand, they, at times, are not willing to do the right thing when it would mean throwing out the rule book. The core issue is their arrogance in thinking that they are "in charge" and, therefore, they determine how things work. They seek power to make themselves feel important. What they don't understand is that

- managers are never truly in charge; the employees who do the critical work are really the ones in charge;

- power held is always weak; power given away (authority granted to employees) grows exponentially in direct proportion to the amount given away;

- when, through the arrogance that emanates from some sense of our greater worth or skill, we hold all leadership decision-making unto ourselves, we deprive God of the opportunity to be the true leader in our organizations for God, as we have seen in this passage, chooses to work through humble and obedient people and, at best, lets arrogant people do themselves in; the reality is that we are not just as good as God at leadership, and when we turn leadership over to God and do it His way, incredibly marvelous things happen, like the development of whole divisions that love each other and love coming to work and even, upon some occasions, real miracles. (I would note here that leadership and relationships in our families and communities does not differ much from leadership and relationships at work.)

There is another aspect to arrogance that comes out of this chapter: the arrogance that comes from expecting God to answer our prayers in the way we want at the time we want, as did those that complained that they had not yet seen the promised land and therefore they had no desire to follow Moses any longer. That arrogance assumes that God is required to live up to our requirements, that we know better than God what is best for us. God not answering prayer in the way they desire is one of the greatest complaints I hear from the teens in my catechism classes. The concept that God sometimes says "no" is something that even adults sometimes have trouble accepting. Yet, often we find a better answer when we don't tell God what to do but simply turn over our problem to Him (and don't take it back). Yes, bad things do happen, and people, including children, do die, but we cannot assume in arrogance to judge that God should have intervened. Only God knows when intervention is warranted and when it is not. We have to trust that He knows what we do not.

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to ask God to show me how to let Him always be in charge and to nudge me to check myself for arrogance regularly, to repent for all those times I have made a leadership or even personal decision without first asking for His guidance, to give thanks for all the many ways He helps me on a daily basis at work and at home, and to offer praise for the way in which He resolves problems in ways that far surpass my abilities and even comprehension.

After that, I will spend some time in contemplation, open to any lessons on humility He wishes to teach me, no matter how difficult they may be. (I have had some experience with His lessons.) I especially welcome His leadership in my life and at my work. I love the way in which He takes care of the people in my directorate, sometimes even protecting them from bad decisions I make when I forget to ask for His help, and in my family and community.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts.

For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of inspirational blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the sidebar of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Have a good day and a good week, remembering in all things to do humbly whatever God requires of you. May you be blessed by His love and His aid as you do so.

Monday Morning Meditation #17: I Am the Lord Your God

I have now slowed to a crawl through the chapters of Numbers. Who would have thought this particular book would be so rich and interesting? In the verses leading up to 15:41, which says, "I am the Lord your God," much takes place in quick order. Israeli spies are sent, in accordance with God's instructions to Moses, to look at the land of Canaan for the purpose of possessing it; this is the land of milk and honey which had been promised to them. While the land was good, the spies found the people living there to be formidable, and, not trusting God implicitly and fully to fulfill His promise, all but two (Joshua and Caleb) became afraid and tried to dissuade the people from doing God's will by spreading lies about the land, e.g., that the land "eats its inhabitants." Upon hearing these lies, the people of Israel began to complain and back off from their forward movement, even going so far as saying that they wanted to return to Egypt. This angered God, but Moses appealed to God to forgive the Israelites yet another time, and God did. There were, however, consequences. The Israelites' punishment was to be 40 years in the wilderness, and with the exception of Joshua and Caleb, who had urged the people not to rebel against God and to fear nothing because God would be with them, only the successive generation would be allowed to enter the promised land. God then killed the lying spies by the plague, and Moses told the remaining people, who had changed their minds and now wanted the promised land, not to go up the mountain because the Lord was not with them. They went nonetheless (in the words of Numbers, they presumed to go), and, as a result, they were smitten by the Amalekites and Canaanites.

Reading: Numbers 15:41

Meditation: Part of the Lord's prayer asks that God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Also, we often pray that in any given situation that God's will be done. Sometimes those are meaningful words when we say them; sometimes they are empty. Clearly, according to this passage, God's volition will be done, no matter what, but how much better it would be if we were to do it without pressure, with gladness in our hearts, in contrast to the rebellion of the Israelites. Our lives would not necessarily be easier, not less filled with sorrow, but we would have a certain peace, not obtainable any other way, in accepting, like Job did, the will of God. Recently, I was struck by the extraordinary submission to God's will evidenced by one of the followers of my blog, Debbie, who lost her daughter, Amy Dawn (who had been on my prayer list for months), to cancer. I cannot come close to describing the depth of her faith that can serve as a model for all of us, so I will suggest that you read her words for yourself at her blog: There's an Angel on My Front Porch.

What happens, however, when unlike Debbie, we do not submit to the will of God, when we disobey God? Punishment! For the Israelites, it was 40 years to be spent in the wilderness. Now, perhaps that was not a punitive response, but an instructive one. In those 40 years, they Israelites would have to learn to rely on God for there is little to rely on in the wildernesss for that number of people. Yes, the Bedouins manage fine -- I know, I spent a week with them two years ago in that same wilderness of the wandering Israelites and quite understand how easy it could be never to find one's way back out, all the sand looking alike -- but the Israelites were there before the days of modern vehicles and domesticated camels. While there have been times in the Old Testament when God's punishment has been fierce and final, in the case of the 40 years in the desert, a certain amount of "faith formation" could take place if the Israelis were, in the long run, willing. (To comment on that, I will have to read further -- although we all do know the ending of this story.)

What happens when we try to do something when God is not with us? This is another question raised by these chapters, and the answer is quite clear: we fail! When the Israelites presumed that they could fight without God, those who went to the mountaintop were slaughtered. Oh, so many times, I have made a decision at work or planned to do something without first praying about it, and likely as not it has failed. When I later pray about it, a good result ensues. I hate being a slow learner like this, but, alas, I am. One of the most dramatic cases occurred a number of years ago when an action I took -- not prayed about because I was an atheist then -- resulted in a lawsuit against my organization and me, and the plaintiff won. The organization (thankfully, a forgiving one) had to pay tens of thousands of dollars for my mistake. Then, when I had left the organization and returned years later, I found that this individual had been promoted to a collegial level, and now I would have to interact with him on a regular basis. I forgave him for that lawsuit and made it clear that I had done so; that occurred at a time after my conversion when God was teaching me about forgiveness. As a result, this person has not only forgiven me in return and become a good colleague; he has become one of my greatest fans and touts his fanhood far and wide.

What happens when someone tries to thwart the will of God? Well, in yet another lesson from these chapters, it would appear that the individual disappears. That is what happened to all the lying spies who tried to prevent the people from fulfilling God's plan for them to acquire the land of the Canaanites. Away they went, succumbing to the plague. Away, too, went an obstreperous doctor in Russia when, after I had obtained the agreement of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow that Katya (Tanya), an ill, blind orphan, deserved to be and would be issued a visa (and eventually was -- see the section on recent prayers answered in the sidebar), the doctor refused to provide the paperwork needed for Tanya to travel to the USA. Right about the time that Tanya got her passport and would need the travel paperwork for the embassy, the doctor simply disappeared and was replaced with a more supportive doctor. No one knows what happened with the first doctor, but getting in God's way was certainly not the smartest thing to do!

Similarly, when I brought dying child artist Shura to the US, I received a number of indications that I should bring him to the Washington, DC/Virginia area. However, because I wanted him with me in California -- I erroneously figured that would be easier all around -- I brought him to California. We found no medical or financial help at all. When we finally got our miraculous offer of assistance from a billionaire in New York, the condition should have made me wince: the care had to be given at the University of Virginia Hospital. And so, like others in the past, we got on a plane in obedience to God, and the end result was stunning: life-changing for Shura and faith confirming for many people.

And then there was Jonah, who refused to go to Ninevah. He got swallowed by a large fish and was thrown up on the shore. Where? Outside Ninevah! He was going to go to Ninevah because that was the will of the Lord, which outweighed in significance the will, desire, or fear of Jonah. I understand Jonah's predicament. There was a time I wanted a different job, and God would not let me have it. The job I have is the one God wanted me to have, the one He pushed me into, and the one He made me stay in. I had a Jonah experience, and I can tell you for sure that what God really wants, God really gets, and there is no question about it!

So, what is the bottom line? God is in charge, and when it is important to Him that His will be done, it will happen! As Numbers 15:41 says: "I am the Lord your God!" Indeed, He is the Lord My God.

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to ask God to show me how to let Him always be in charge and to knock me on the head when I "presume" to ignore His will, to repent for all those times I have marched on alone without Him or refused to march along with Him, to give thanks for His forgiveness in each case and his continued lessons, and to offer praise for the depth for His love and patience for someone as unworthy as I have been.

After that, I will spend some time in contemplation, open to His guidance and His will. I especially welcome His presence right now here with me, as well as in my daily life and at my work this coming week and always. Why He never fails me, no matter how ornery I am, I do not know, but I love it!

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts.

For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of inspirational blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the sidebar of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Have a good day and a good week, remembering in all things to accept the will of the Lord. May you be blessed by the outpouring of love and the stunning miracles that follow when one listens, trusts, and obeys.

If you pick this up as a weekly devotional activity, please share with me and others your own thoughts about today's reading or any other scripture that you choose for meditation. Until I figure out how to use the Mr. Linky buttons, you are welcome to copy and use the image of the mission church and share the meme of Monday Morning Meditation for starting out the work week closer to God.

Monday Morning Meditation #16: True Forgiveness Requires Love

After zipping right along for the last two weeks, this week I got only as far as the next chapter of Numbers. I found the story in Chapter 12 as very relevant to today, to my life, and to the life around me. In this story, Aaron and his wife, Miriam, become upset that Mose had married a Cushite woman and then tried to put themselves on a par with him, saying that God had spoken to them, too (In dreams). Now, there's a great lack of humility. The nasty root of all it seems to be jealousy (and failure to mind one's own Ps and Qs, as the saying went when I was a child.) So, God called them all together and told them why He spoke directly to his servant, Moses, who was a humble man. God was not happy with Miriam and Aaron, however, and after He left, Aaron noticed that Miriam had become white with leprosy. She had to be removed from the community. Aaron turned to Moses, asking him for help, and meek Moses, having apparently never taken umbrage at a brother he clearly loved, turned to God, who ultimately relented and cured Miriam.

Reading: Numbers 12: 1-16

Meditation: This story struck me as containing an important lesson, but I had to read the chapter several times to determine what that might be. (If someone more astute than I considers the lesson to be different than what I have analyzed it to be, please correct me. I love correction; it is the source of my learning.) At first, I thought the story was mainly about jealousy, i.e. Aaron's and Miriam's jealousy of the relationship that Moses had with God. Then, there was the issue of the sister-in-law that they did not like, and also the sense of self-importance expressed in a form of self-aggrandizement as they noted that God communicated with them, too. (Obviously, in a manner different from the way He communicated with Moses -- which could make a person jealous. Each of us has our own individual relationship with God. The relationship that one person has with God should not make another person jealous, but since God gifts individuals differently and human nature being what it is, I could see the chance of baseless jealousy developing.)

After thinking through all that, however, I posit that the story is more about forgiveness and love, the two being inextricably interwoven. How well I know about that woof and warp! A couple of years ago, the president of our union at the organization where I work died suddenly. His best friend took charge of the funeral, and his family flew from out of town. The friend gave the family a list of potential eulogists, with their backgrounds. They chose two others and me. Had they been given the full background, they might have selected differently. The union president had opposed my being hired and not much time had elapsed since I had arrived for him to become supportive. He was, at best, collegial. I, too, was collegial. Actually, I forgave him. After all, he had lost; I had been offered the job over his dissent. So, surprised but willing, I set about to write the eulogy, but I could not. The more I tried, the blanker the page became. The blanker the page became, the foggier my memory became. I could not think of one thing to write, let alone dreaming up those wonderful warm fuzzy phrases for starting and finishing. There really is not a lot of advance writing time for a eulogy, and so the night before the funeral I was facing the prospect of reading a blank sheet the next day. I asked God for help and was led to understand that I had to forgive this man. But I had forgiven him, I argued. No, was the response. Forgiveness is not simply the deliberate pushing aside of malice or resentment. True forgiveness springs from love. You mean, I have to love this guy, honestly, seriously, fully love him? I took in that concept with more than a bit of incredulity. How would that be possible? Well, as we know, with God all things are possible. As I began to think of the good things he had done for several of my employees, the times he had come to me to ask me to bend some rules for the good of one person or another or to take in someone who had run afoul of management in another division, and the way in which he had worked tirelessly, selfless, and humbly for the benefit of the employees, I began to feel both love and respect for him. I wish I had been able to achieve this level of forgiveness while he was alive. The minute that wish crossed my mind, the dam holding back the eulogistic thoughts broke, and ink splattered all over my paper. I had a eulogy, a really decent eulogy, thanks be to God. The next day after I delivered it, my boss said that, based on the warmth of my words, it must have been difficult for me to write that eulogy. How little did he know how right he was -- but for the wrong reason. Several days later, the union president's friend found me in my office and told me that the family asked him to relay to me how meaningful they had found my eulogy. They wanted me to know that it was my words that had started the healing process for them. Now I cannot begin to relay to you the flood of emotions that passed through and out of me upon hearing that, but the most important one was gratitude -- gratitude to God for helping me find the love I needed to write the words the family needed, for the memorable lesson on forgiveness, for a divinely induced change in my attitude toward the person I was eulogizing, for being allowed to be His instrument in healing the family (or at least beginning to heal the family), for the healing that this experience brought me, and for the spiritual growth through which He had led me compassionately but resolutely. How I love God's lessons!

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to ask God to keep on giving me lessons, to repent for times that I have been a slow learner or even rejected a lesson that seemed too difficult, to give thanks for His compassion and patience, as well as His resoluteness, and to offer praise for His ability and willingness to reach a person as dense as I can be sometimes/often.

After that, I will spend some time in contemplation, open to any new understanding with which He is willing to bless me and, if nothing else, then welcoming nothing but His presence. The sheer joy of His presence surpasses any other happiness I have ever experienced.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts.

For inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of inspirational blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the right-hand side of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Have a good day and a week, remembering to forgive others as God forgives us. May you be blessed by the love which follows.

If you pick this up as a weekly devotional activity, please share with me and others your own thoughts about today's reading or any other scripture that you choose for meditation. Feel free to copy the image of the mission church; maybe some day my Internet-inept self will be able to figure out how to use the Mr. Linky buttons, but to date I remain incompetent at the more sophisticated blog stuff. In the interim, you are welcome to use the image and share the meme of Monday Morning Meditation for starting out the work week closer to God.

Monday Morning Meditation #15: We Want What We Want, and It Is More Than We Have

Last Monday I finished Leviticus, and ironically yesterday a new follower, Dee, wrote about the importance of Leviticus in her life on one of my other blogs, Modern Mysticism. One day, based on her comments, I will go back and look at Leviticus more closely. For now, though, I am buried in Numbers, which, I found out, has nothing to do with math but with such things as counting people (the first census!) for the purpose of drafting males for war. (I had no idea that this practice has existed for centuries and was begun by God! That is wild!) So much else that I thought was modern appears to have roots dozens of centuries ago, actions that are enumerated in Numbers: the beginning of the priesthood (a very literal calling of the Levites, the offspring of Aaron), continuation of rules for living (e.g., the exclusion of lepers that continued well past the time of St. Francis), and the concept of sin-contrition-confession-penance. However, none of these practices, as curiously satisfying as it was to learn their origins, struck me nearly as strongly as did the complaints of the people against God for giving them only manna: "And the mixed multitude that was among them fell a lusting; and the children of Israel also wept on their part, and said: 'Would that we were given flesh to eat! We remember the fish, which we were wont to eat in Egypt for nought; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic; but now our soul is dried away; there is nothing at all; we have nought save this manna to look to.'"

Readings: Numbers 11:4-6.

Meditation: I wonder how often we look God's gift horses in the mouth, so to speak. Manna was a great gift, a wonderful food, but once surfeited with it, the people wanted more. Don't we tend to do the same kind of thing today? We begin, for example, with a starter house, knowing that we are not going to be satisfied with that, knowing that we are going to want more, before we even fully experience what we have. We want upgrades on plane flights. We want to kingsize our meals (which is not even healthy and often results in having to kingsize our clothes). We carefully plan to keep our families small so that all our children can have more, whether or not they truly need more. Somewhere once upon a time I read that my children's toys -- pots and pans and the like -- are better at facilitating the development of creativity than all those fancy toys I could never afford. At any rate, my kids never complained, grew up to be creative adults, and do not overindulge their kids, which makes me think that all those extra things and multiple gifts -- we never gave more than one gift to each child at Christmas -- were not necessary in the long run. One year we had no money at all for Christmas gifts, so Donnie used his graphic arts skills to make a book of coupons for each child. Each coupon was good for a special activity to be done together with Mom or Dad, e.g., a trip to the zoo, a couple hours of playing together in the park, a tete-a-tete dinner at McDonald's, the opportunity to cook dinner together with Donnie (I could not help much with that -- as Doah wrote in his book about me: "Mommy is a very nice Mommy, but she is a very bad cook"), and so on. They had 12 months to redeem their coupons. All were redeemed over time, spreading Christmas over a whole year. The kids remember that incredibly impoverished Christmas as their favorite.

Today our children are grown. We had a lot of them because ones we did not birth kept appearing at our door, growing the Mahlou clan, whether or not we could responsibly afford to do so. We had little money, but we had a lot of love. I would rather have it that way than the other way around. As for affording them, whenever God put another one in front of us, God gave us the wherewithall to help that one, including, in one case, sending us a billionaire to cover a million-dollar medical bill for a child from Siberia. Looking back on it, all we ever had was manna, but manna was enough. I would not trade it for all the rice in China or, for that matter, all the baklava in Greece.

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to ask God to keep on sending me His manna for it indeed is my favorite food, to repent for times that I may have drooled over an American apple pie that I did not need and that would not really bring me either happiness or health, to give thanks for all the ways in which God takes care of me and mine every day, and to offer praise for the ways in which He manages to orchestrate caring for all the needs of everyone in the world who will go to Him to ask and even often of those who don't know to ask or won't ask, just because He is merciful.

After that, I will spend some time in contemplation, open to any new understanding with which He is willing to bless me and, if nothing else, then welcoming nothing but His presence. The sheer joy of His presence surpasses any other happiness I have ever experienced.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts.

For inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of inspirational blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the right-hand side of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.

Have a good day and a week enriched by the eating of God's manna. May you be blessed by the way in which He cares for you.

If you pick this up as a weekly devotional activity, please share with me and others your own thoughts about the message of Exodus 35-57 and Leviticus or any other scripture that you choose for meditation. Feel free to copy the image of the mission church; maybe some time in the near future my Internet-inept self will be able to figure out how to use the Mr. Linky buttons, but to date I remain incompetent at the more sophisticated blog stuff. Yes, I know it has been 14 weeks, but I am exceptionally computer-inept. In the interim, you are welcome to use the image and share the meme of Monday Morning Meditation for starting out the work week closer to God.