Thursday of Week 20 – Ez 36:23-28; Psalm 50:12-15,18-19; Matthew 22:1-14

. . . wouldn’t you like that? To be able to start all over again. Get a blank page – without all the baggage, the ballast of history, accretions of bad habits. As if by the wave of a magic wand. Then plunge into a land of paradise where everything is now okay.

Nobody will give you a magic wand. Yet, at the entrance to the palace there stands the Servant with a wedding garment over his arm. All you need to do is to take off the that dusty expensive dress and to expose your nakedness for a moment – not much to ask, yeah?

Not much, but enough, to be advanced from the group of the called to the group of the chosen. And not to be thrown out into the darkness where there is weeping and grinding of teeth. But be bestowed with a new heart.