The question today, on the Ides of March, is who do you trust? This Sunday has four beautiful Scriptures that work on aspects of this question. Samuel is called by God to appoint the future king of the nation of Israel. We see the difference between our judgment with our cultural values and God’s judgment of who can do the work. God sees the goodness in David. The psalm shows us God’s wisdom in choosing David. Where would we be without the legacy of David’s psalms?

Psalm 23 presents God as the wonderful leader in our lives who never leaves us alone to face the world and its troubles.

In Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, the message is repeated. We live in a dark world with many opportunities to take paths that will lead us to darkness. Remember that God is with us and needs to be at the center of all of our decisions. This reading ends with the wonderful words we sing: “Awake, O sleeper, / Arise from the dead, / and Christ will give you light.”

The Gospel reading is a familiar story. It shows the healing love of Jesus and His disdain for our human distorted logic. Jesus comes upon a man blind from birth. His disciples ask Him who is responsible for this man’s illness. It was common in those days to assign blame to an infirmity of life. Jesus teaches us to see the man’s condition as an opportunity to show the healing kindness of God. The man’s neighbors, the Pharisees, take the wrong road trying to see where the blame lies. The Pharisees add to this by accusing Jesus of the sin of helping someone on the Sabbath. All of these readings invite us to allow God to be at the core of our discernment in life’s decisions.

In Shakespeare’s play about Julius Caesar, the seer warns Caesar of impending doom. Today’s readings invite us to listen to God in our decisions, hopefully leading to a better outcome than poor Julius.