2B20.    1 Samuel 3:3b-10, 19.  This reading says, “At that time Samuel was not familiar with the Lord, because the Lord had not revealed anything to him as yet.”  When Eli, Samuel’s teacher and master, realizes that the Lord was speaking to Samuel, Eli tells Samuel to respond by saying, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”  Spiritual life is a whole dimension beyond physical life.  Spiritual life is the developing of a relationship with the invisible God, as the loving Lord of our lives.  It requires faith to take a trusting, humble step beyond the security of living in just a physical world where our bodies are what life is all about.   The spiritual life is based on prayer which is an ongoing communication with the God who is life for us.  The spiritual life is living completely dependent on God.

John 1:35-42.  John the Baptist refers to Jesus as the Lamb of God.  In John 1:29b, John calls Jesus, “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”, which is to say that Jesus is the Messiah.  John mentioned to two of his followers that Jesus, who was walking by, was the Lamb of God.  One of those two was “Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter.”  Andrew brought his brother Simon to Jesus, who adopted Simon as one of his own by renaming him Peter.  That was Jesus‘ way of calling Peter to be one of his Apostles.  Prayer is not a monologue where we talk to the invisible God and he just listens without responding.  Prayer is a dialogue where God also speaks to us but usually not in words that are audible.  We learn how to listen by his enabling us to interpret the signs that he sends to us as his way of communicating with us.  That gift from him to us grows and develops as our relationship with the invisible God deepens, as we draw closer and closer to him, as we fall more and more in love with him.

1 Corinthians 6:13c-15a, 17-20.  This reading says, “Whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one Spirit with him.” The goal of our spiritual growth is to become one with the Lord while still maintaining our individuality.  We are flesh just as Jesus became flesh but at the same time retaining and growing in the spiritual.  “The body is not for immorality, but for the Lord.”  In biology we are listed as one of the animals of this earth.  However, we are not to be governed by our animal instincts and demands but by our calling to be children of God.  Non-human animals do not have a morality but we humans do.  “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?  For you have been purchased at a price.  Therefore glorify God in your body.” We are not the god of ourselves doing whatever we may wish; only God is the God of our lives.  In the ongoing development of our faith lives we more and more recognize him and interact with him as God and Lord over us.  We are not our own but one of his.  Living here on earth now as one of his, later he will take us into his home in heaven as our God and Lord for all eternity.