Limits

A Reflection on the First Reading for Sunday, September 4th, 2022:
Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Wisdom
9.13-18

For who can learn the counsel of God?
Or who can discern what the Lord wills?
For the reasoning of mortals is worthless,
and our designs are likely to fail;
for a perishable body weighs down the soul,
and this earthly tent burdens the thoughtful mind.

We can hardly guess at what is on earth,
and what is at hand we find with labour;
but who has traced out what is in the heavens?
Who has learned your counsel,
unless you have given wisdom
and sent your holy spirit from on high?

And thus the paths of those on earth were set right,
and people were taught what pleases you,
and were saved by wisdom.

I seem to have a hard time keeping track of where my appendages are. That would probably account for all the marks running up my arm, collected gradually by sequential small burns and nicks, or the bruises and scrapes that my legs seem to have gathered as I saunter through life. I can’t seem to figure out where my body ends and the edge of the frying pan or the corner of the picnic table begins. It’s not that I’m clumsy; I just have problems with boundaries.

For a perishable body weighs down the soul,
  and this earthly tent burdens the thoughtful mind

I’m feeling my limits these days. I tend to live for a span as if I don’t have them, until I run smack into one. I am, in the core of my existence, defined by limits. There is a limit to how many places I can be, to how many people I can help, to how much beauty I can create, to how much damage I can do. There is a limit to how many things I can fix, to how many things I can learn, to how many mysteries I can solve, to how many people I can love. And there’s a limit on all of this in every person I could ask to join with me, to bear the load, or to find a way. Except for One.

And thus the paths of those on earth are set right.

The word ‘paths’ lifts off the page, and joins itself to another time I heard of a path. The path of life David sings about in Psalm 16.11.

Tu me fais connaître le chemin qui conduit à la vie.
Quand Tu es là, la joie déborde.
Auprès de Toi, le bonheur ne finit pas!

You make known to me the path of life.
In Your presence there is fullness of joy.
At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Every morning I get an English verse of the day in an app, and a French verse of the day in an email. One day, during a season particularly lacking in joy, they were the same verse. I found myself memorizing it in the French because I was pierced through by the thrust of ‘déborde’ — overflowing, beyond the boundary, past the limit I set for it.

This is what joy gets up to when You are there. Quand Tu es là. 
It spills right over the edge. My limits aren’t the issue anymore.
 
This is the most anchoring and freeing thing I’ve known:
   auprés de Toi … close to You … holding Your right hand. 
This is where I am held firm and set loose, all at the same time. 

Here I can settle into my limits, revel in the nearness of You and take a walk.  
  Thankfully, only You are limitless, my King.



Noreen Smith

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