Teach Me Your Ways, O Lord

Growing up in our neighborhood, there was a couple that were both blind – the Maynards.  For the life of me I can never remember their first names; they were always “Mr. & Mrs. Maynard.”  They would go around town with guide dogs – two huge shepherds.  They were Catholic, so they had gone to church with us as well with the dogs, and the dogs would sit with them in a particular pew.  But when you went to their house for some reason, they didn’t use the guide dogs, because they knew where everything was and they could just sense what the proper way was (as long as nobody moved it).

They came to mind today as I was thinking about the psalm.  “Your ways, O Lord, make known to me; teach me your paths.  Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are my God, my savior.”

Sometimes we know precisely what to do; we know where the path of the Lord is – in our house.  But at other times, we’re walking down the street, we’d cross in traffic – we need guidance, we need help, we need assistance.  We need to ask the Lord to help us know what the proper way to go is.  Maybe guidance sometimes of church, of scripture, of friend—we need to cry out, “Teach me, O Lord, your ways; teach me your paths.”

Monsignor Daniel Hoye