Our reading for today is a psalm of "keeping." When the psalmist asks "From where will my help come?" the answer is that our help comes from the "keeping" of God. God's keeping preserves and protects us in every time and place. God shades us from the searing sun and the eerie moonlight. God keeps us from evil and evil from us. In the transitions and changes of life, our going out and coming in, God keeps us in God's care. God plants our feet in the ground of love and lets nothing and no one uproot us.
During this season of Lent, we direct our thoughts to the redemption won for us by our Savior Jesus Christ on the cross. It is in that redemption that God keeps us as God's children. In his prayer for his disciples just before his death, both those who followed him in his ministry during his life on earth and those believers in the succeeding centuries, Jesus speaks of "keeping." He refers to the disciples who "keep God's word." He asks his Holy Father to "keep those whom you have given me" and says that "Those whom you gave me I have kept." Finally Jesus says "I do not pray that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the evil one."
God does not take us out of the world. God has work for us to do here. God asks us to keep God's word, to spread the good news of redemption, to be part of that redemption by the love we show our fellow human beings and all of creation. And "the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will keep our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."
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