Iron & Altar

Their makers shall be like them, everyone that trusts in them. - Psalm 115:8

The idol-logic is simple and devastating: what you worship, you become. The silver and gold idols have mouths that cannot speak, eyes that cannot see, ears that cannot hear. Make them, trust them, and you gradually acquire the same qualities - unable to speak truth, unable to see clearly, unable to hear what matters. The formation runs in the direction of the object.

Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. Hosea names the half-hearted devotion that looks like religion but produces nothing - altars that became occasions of sin, ordinances treated as a stranger's words, sacrifices that satisfied no one. The cultivation without the fruit. The stalk that forms no ear.

Jesus went around all the towns and villages. Not the strategic markets. All of them. And at the sight of the crowds his heart was moved with pity. Not managed with analysis. Moved. The laborer the harvest needs is the one who has been formed by the one who is moved with pity - not the one who has assembled the best plan.

Their makers shall be like them. Name the three things you have given the most sustained attention to this week - not what you intend to give it to, what you actually gave it to. Are those things forming you toward the one who is moved with pity, or toward something that cannot see or hear? And carry [name]: Lord, let him be formed by you. Move him with pity for the specific troubled and abandoned people around him. Let him be a laborer in that harvest.

Lord, form me in your likeness - the one who goes around all the towns and villages, the one who is moved with pity rather than strategy. Let my attention produce the right formation. Precious Blood of Jesus, save us. Amen.