Hearth & Altar

How long will you straddle the issue? Elijah's question to the people is not rhetorical. He is asking them to make a choice they have been refusing to make. If the Lord is God, follow him. If Baal, follow him. The people did not answer. The non-answer is the answer - the comfortable indefiniteness that avoids the cost of commitment.

The contest that follows is not a competition between equals. Baal's prophets call from morning to noon with no response. Elijah mocks: perhaps he is asleep. Then Elijah prays one sentence to the Lord and fire falls from heaven and consumes the offering, the wood, the stones, the dust, and the water in the trench. The people fall prostrate: the Lord is God. The Lord is God. The straddling ends when the fire falls.

Do not think I came to abolish the Law or the prophets. Jesus came to fulfill. The smallest letter and the smallest stroke will not pass until all is accomplished. The Law is not the problem; the incomplete reception of the Law is the problem. The fulfillment is not the abolition but the completion - the full realization of what the Law was always pointing toward.

• For our family, that we would not straddle the issue - that the choice for the Lord would be clear and actual rather than comfortable and indefinite, we pray to the Lord.
• For those whose faith has been straddling - genuine but without full commitment - that the fire would fall and settle the question, we pray to the Lord.
• For those who teach the commandments faithfully, great and small, that they would be called great in the kingdom, we pray to the Lord.
• In this Sacred Heart month, for the heart that prayed the one prayer that ended the straddling of Israel, we pray to the Lord.

Whoever keeps the commandments and teaches them will be called great. Pick one commandment you have been keeping casually - observing in letter but not in spirit, keeping minimally rather than fully. Give it full attention this week. The fulfillment is not the abolition of the Law. It is the living-out of what the Law was always pointing toward.

How long will you straddle? You will face this question as a parent when your children are old enough to choose whether the faith they were given is the faith they are choosing. The straddling is normal and it is not a resting place. Help them move toward the choice, not the comfort of not-choosing.