“Please sit safely.” …”Please put your toys away…Now.” …”Please stop talking.”

Over the years, words I’ve spoken as teacher or parent to children over whom I have had authority and responsibility often have fallen on so-called “deaf ears.”

Which brings to mind another expression. Whether taken individually or collectively as a class, there definitely were times when I felt as if I were “talking to the wall.”

Kids not obliging to my words? Understandable. They have free wills. Walls obeying? Laughable! Duh! They are inanimate objects.

The wind blows my hair; the rain saturates my outfit. Inconveniently. I’ve muttered, verbalizing my desires that they would stop their offence till I’m “blue in the face,” and they’ve never heeded my words. Wind and rain doing their thing. Doing what they’re meant to do. Inconvenient as their actions are to me.

Enter the Lord Jesus Christ… As God, He tells the wind and the sea to be still and they immediately obey. No delay. No hesitation. …Not a surprising result to believers in a God Who spoke the world into existence.

Which brings me to thoughts of today’s Corpus Christi feast. I wish I could credit by name the preacher who introduced me more than a decade ago to this “argument,” but I do not know his name. His logic, nonetheless, has stuck with me. Here’s the gist of what he said.

Although human beings have free will and therefore can disobey, can turn a “deaf ear” to authority, the rest of creation, devoid of free will, have no choice but to obey God’s command, which is why He could speak the world into existence, and calm the winds and the seas.

Given that reality, it is inevitable, then, that during the Last Supper when Jesus said to bread that it was His Body and to wine that it was His Blood, the bread and wine had no choice, no option to do anything other than to become His Body and His Blood.

Today we celebrate that reality in the beautiful feast traditionally known as Corpus Christi.

What am I yearning for this day?

…To more fully appreciate the reality of the Eucharist, and the faith I inherited which makes that belief an unearned gift.

…To do what I can to share with those who have never heard the preacher’s argument to consider the logic he expressed so that more of God’s children could come to believe in and to experience the sacramental reality of His Real Presence, a presence He promised to extend till the end of time.

…To live more fully and faithfully in the Lord’s Word…to stop turning a “deaf ear” to the Lord when I don’t want to obey, to stop being so negative and self-defeated in the face of adversity, and to believe, no matter what my mind and body tell me, that in the power of God’s Word and Will, mountains can be moved and storms calmed if I humbly and confidently speak in His Name, always listening and obeying, stilling myself in His Presence.