purpose

Today’s Word: Signs

Steve · August 11, 2013 · 4 Comments

Signs, whether informational or directional, are really just stand-ins — symbols — for real things. The street sign is not the street. The stop sign is not the law. The map is not the journey. And yet, we need these signs to help us get around, understand where we are and where we want to go, and keep us safe. We’d be pretty lost and confused in a world without signs.

Henri Nouwen once wrote: “We, as followers of Jesus, are sent into this world to be visible signs of God’s unconditional love. Thus we are not first of all judged by what we say but by what we live.” So like it or not, aware or not, we are all walking signs. We are symbols that either proclaim the unconditional love of God or tell the world that we’re all on our own and there’s no hope for joy, life or anything beyond our small little lives. Either way, we’re signs. Spiritual sandwich boards. So what are we saying and where do we point?

Ask yourself in silence: What signals am I sending out to the world? Do my actions and my words point to God and invite others to a life of faith or do they leave others wondering what it is I stand for?

Today’s Word: Busy

Steve · August 3, 2013 · 5 Comments

cross — The Great Cross, St. Augustine, Florida. SJG photo.

In the Biblical story of the two sisters Martha and Mary (Luke 10), Martha is buzzing around the house, cooking, cleaning, waiting on everybody and “getting stuff done.” Her sister Mary, on the other hand, has seated herself at the feet of Jesus, resting serenely in his presence and words. When Martha objects to her lazy sister (can’t you just hear and see this story unfolding?), Jesus sets her straight: “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.”

So we should just pray all day and not worry about keeping house or going to work, right? Hardly. We still need to do the stuff of life. But we need time at the feet of Jesus, too. If we make prayer and the presence of God the foundation for the rest of our lives, we will find ourselves with less anxiety and worry, and with more peace of mind and heart. There is one thing we need. The rest will fall into place. The work will get done. But the better part — peace — will not be taken from us.

Ask yourself in silence: Do I use busy-ness as an excuse to not spend time at the feet of Jesus? Do I let the presence of “stuff to get done” keep me from the presence of God?

Today’s Word: Psalm

Steve · July 26, 2013 · 3 Comments

Once, when a friend sensed in my voice some pain, he sent me Psalm 61, written for the chief musician and for a stringed instrument. He knew I’d like that. He also knew, as I do but sometimes forget, that we all long to shout: “Hear my cry, God. Listen to my prayer.” My friend is wiser than he sometimes lets on, for he really knows what it means to say: “I will call to you when my heart is overwhelmed.” We all feel overwhelmed from time to time, and for those times, God gives us the Psalms.

I needed my friend’s prayers and this Psalm, and some day he may need mine. This is what makes us Church, the body of Christ, broken yet unbroken. It is this mutual love and care that leads us to a rock higher than we ever could reach on our own. Together and separately we seek refuge there, dwelling under God’s tent and huddling beneath his protective wings, baby birds open-mouthed and hiding from the storm. Singing.

There we stay, sometimes hiding, sometimes peeking out, but always enthroned in the nest of God’s hands. Seeking to be fed. Always singing a psalm of praise or pain, assured that God hears both.

Ask yourself in silence: Do I have the confidence to cry or sing out to God, even in my darkest times?

Today’s Word: Restless

Steve · July 25, 2013 · 10 Comments

In his book, Doing the Truth in Love, Michael J. Himes writes: “at the center of our being is an endlessly nagging sense of, ‘Yes, yes, yes, but more.’” Likewise, St. Augustine famously wrote, at the beginning of his Confessions: “You made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” We can be a restless people, especially when it comes to our relationship with God. We want more.

As it turns out, this restlessness is a gift. It’s all the nagging, confusing, irritating work of the Spirit. God made us to be restless, made us to be wondering and discontented and wandering about our spiritual lives, because God knew this restlessness would ultimately lead us right back to him. God knew that, with the help of the Spirit, we wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t accept the easy way of just meeting obligations and skimming by on the bare minimum of spiritual living. God knew that contentment can be the death of spiritual growth. So God made us restless.

Ask yourself in silence: Are you restless for God? What is the “more” you want right now?

Today’s Word: Patience

Steve · July 18, 2013 · 2 Comments

woman — Waiting, on Lamma Island, near Hong Kong, 2008. SJG photo.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once wrote:

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.

(to read the entire poem, visit IgnatianSpirituality.com)

When I was young, I was not a patient person. If I had an idea, I wanted to act on it. If a gift was coming I wanted it as soon as possible. And I couldn’t possibly see into the future to the time when I could do all the things I knew I wanted to do — meet the perfect girl, graduate from high school, go to college, start a family and career…

But time and faith have shown me over and over, as Robert Frost reminds us, that “way leads on to way.” Our job is to get up every day and pay attention, watching for the directional signs and fellow travelers that God puts into our lives. For inherent in this idea of being patient with God and with our lives is the idea of trust. If we’re going to wait, if we’re going to place our lives and our futures in the hands of someone we cannot see, we have to trust that, in fact, that someone is present in our lives, caring and moving and working in us and through us. God is there pointing the way, if we are quiet and still enough to notice.

Ask yourself in silence: What am I waiting for in my life? Do I trust enough to be patient in God’s “slow work?”