Thanksgiving in my family is one holiday where you just don’t know what you’re going to get: who’s going to show up? Will the turkey get cooked? Will there be snow, or will it be warm enough for a hike that will work up a sweat? In years past the answers to these questions have varied significantly, but as much as these things are unpredictable, my love for this season is the opposite. This time of year, from Thanksgiving to the Christmas season holds a very special place in my heart and my appreciation has only grown as I have grown. A few years ago, I discovered the Liturgical season of Advent. Okay, yes- growing up I always knew it was a thing. I knew the word, I knew that it meant the time before Christmas and I knew that it meant we would light the Advent wreath candles at the dinner table (I always loved playing with the little elves dressed in red and green that looked as if they were doing acrobatics as the hugged the candle sticks). However, only recently have I discovered what a beautiful season this really is, and a lot of my love for this season has come from the truth and beauty I found in a little book I stumbled upon last year. Come, Lord Jesus: Meditations on the Art of WaitingWe look at the different facets of this season, turning it like a jewel in our hands. Certainly it is a season for children. It is a season of the child, the joy of the Child who came to give joy to the world. It is a season, certainly, of the family, of the community. Family life was solidly established in a lowly, humble, poor place, with three persons who loved utterly and were utterly given- even the Child, from the first moment, because he was divine. It is a season of great tenderness, and a season of hush. It is a season for everyone. Advent summons us to fold the wings of our souls. There is rich meaning in the expression “folded wings”. Folded wings that remain always folded and are never spread to fly in giving would be wings that would deteriorate in atrophy whereas wings that are always spread and never folded in intense personal prayer, reflection, contemplation would be wings quickly spent or perhaps misspent...with all this- the joy, the tenderness…the folded wings- Advent is a season of tremendous purpose. Every once in a while a book comes along that is like a perfect fit in the puzzle of life. It slides right in. It brings clarity and purpose and beauty. This is one of those books for me. I hope you find a book someday that is that perfect fit for you. I believe that we are meant to have many of these in our lives. That is why I am sharing this with you. Maybe this book can be one of those puzzle-piece books for you too. Advent: it’s a season of tremendous purpose! We do not wait idly or by distracting ourselves with shiny and attractive things, we wait with purpose, we prepare our hearts. We turn our swords into plowshares. We all have blades (and they are God-given), which are our strength and our power. And each one decides: whether I will strike out with the sword or whether I will turn my sword into a plowshare to plow up my own little heart, getting all the hardness out of it- all the harness out of my spirit, of my soul- and become rich soil for God’s planting. He wants so much to plant; He wants us to flower; he wants us to bring forth fruit. But he leaves it to us to work with the plowshare of grace. The time is now. How will you choose to use your God-given blades this season? How will you choose to till the “soil of your heart”? How will our Savior find your heart when He comes?
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We can do hard things. We can do hard things if it's the right thing. This semester, our SPO Ohio chapter is going through the Virtues Formation course. In our opening meeting we heard about a gazillion times: It's always a mistake to decide what you are going to do before you decide who you are going to be. Character my friends. It's got me thinking a lot about the characteristics that I want to be defined by: generosity, honesty, purity, braveness, faith, hope, joy, peace. In any thing I do, I want to be marked by these things. In particular, I've been looking at the beatitudes and am fascinated by righteousness. God tells us... Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, they shall be satisfied. Trust in the Lord and do good and so you will dwell in the land and enjoy security. Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your Heart. We can do hard things. We can do good. And God is going to take care of us. I don't know about you, but I'm not scared. I am NOT scared. I am not scared because He promises it, and He never breaks His promises. It's like a "crazy trust exercise"! Sometimes, it's not easy or what we want or understand, but it's right. What is it?
Mary says, "do whatever He tells you". Whether it's good and easy. Whether it's hard and we don't understand. If we can be faithful and righteous in little things, we can be that way with the bigger things and even the things that we don't understand. I was talking recently to a good friend of mine about all this stuff she shared an image with me of a cross-stitching or embroidery. My mom does that stuff- I never have the patience for it... What amazes me is that while her embroideries turn out beautifully, if you flip them over and look at the back side.... it's a crazy mess! knots, all different colors, twists and tangles and who the heck knows what else... But all along, the she knew the image she was making. She was working from the front making a beautiful picture and those strings in the back, while they look confusing, all have their place. Every single one. God can write straight with crooked lines my friends! He can make something beautiful out of what looks to us like a mess. Trust. Someday we will see and then we will understand, but for now we can do our part and take our place and do one thing at a time. Do the right thing. Do it well. Live with integrity, patience, faithfulness, righteousness, trust. I've been thinking a lot lately about little moments. I heard this quote from Saint Gianna sometime in my junior year of college and it has stuck with me ever since: The secret of happiness is to live moment by moment and to thank God for all the He, in His goodness, sends us day after day." I really think there's something to that. Moment to moment. Thanking God for all that He chooses to send our way: beautiful things, scary things, unexpected things, unwanted things, wanted things, the things that we're indifferent to. Lately, it seems that many of the conversations I have are centered on the things that are hard in life. I ask how are you doing? and inevitably get the answer: I'm busy. I'm stressed. I'm tired. I'm realizing what a big fat lie the world is feeding me, and feeding the college students on this campus, and feeding young adults and everyone: If you're not busy, if you don't have a lot going on, if you don't have anything to complain about, then you are doing something wrong. What a BIG, FAT LIE. Don't be thankful, don't see the positive, don't see the things that you have, and are being given, see the things that are being taken away, see the negative, complain. Gratefulness....breeds gratefulness. I think what the world needs is a grace. I think it's what I need. Grace to let the scales fall from our eyes, to ask in every trial, every hard thing: how am I being asked to grow here? in Faith? in Hope? in Love?
The past few weeks, I've been waking up at 5.45 every morning to have breakfast and pray morning prayer with my roommates. When you do something like that, it can be easy to be grouchy. When you get into the routine of meals together, work, life, relationships, it can be easy to be blind to the gift. It can be easy to choose, complacency and indifference and even negativity. But I think that God wants to give us all the grace to not just find ourselves in our lives, but to embrace the situations we find ourselves in, the easy things, the trials, the duties as well as the spontaneity. How can we do this? I'm still learning for sure, but I think one way is to choose to engage: do something goofy, do something unexpected, write down the good things, talk about the good things, smell the roses, watch the birds! This all started because this morning, as I sat at the dinner table with my 6 roommates for breakfast at 6.10 am, I found myself faced with a choice... sit in silence or make a memory. Our conversation soon turned from "what was that noise?" to "The Coffee Maker is a Monster"! We wrote a poem. Thank you God for early mornings, thank you God for routines, thank you God for roommates, thank you God for noisy coffee makers, thank you God for laughter, thank you God for morning brains, thank you God for rainy days, thank you for fall, thank you for cozy sweaters, thank you for coffee shops, thank you for work, thank you for teammates, thank you for choices and desires and friends and family and good conversations, and thank you for your love. Thank you for silly poems..... |
This Blog...I'm Emily: a mission leader with Saint Paul's Outreach. This is blog is here to keep you up to date with what is happening in the mission field at Ohio State! Archives
October 2016
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