O Me of Little Faith
November 25, 2008 at 9:10 pm (Faith, Prayer)
I was reminded this past weekend of how very small my faith is at times. On Thursday I prayed often that God would change the heart and mind of someone who was really missing the mark in terms of loving one of their family members. I prayed and hoped that He would open the lines of communication between the two.
On Sunday morning, instead of having faith that God had heard and answered my prayer, I found myself wondering if the worst in this situation hadn’t already happened. But then, God stepped in and surprised me. A heart had changed, conversations took place and once again He reminded me that He is God and He can and does hear the our prayers and the cries of our heart.
I don’t know if it’s that I didn’t expect God to move so quickly or perhaps I really didn’t expect Him to move at all. All I know is that more often than not, my faith is small.
Once I again I pray:
Lord I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief. (Mark 9:24)
Thou Shalt Be…
November 24, 2008 at 1:37 pm (Jesus, Love, Maturing in Christ)
Read the following quote this morning. It’s a good follow-up to my last post.
The great commandment is not “thou shalt be right.”
The great commandment is to be ”in love.”
Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs
Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?
Jesus replied: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. (Matthew 22:36-40)
The interesting thing about this quote and the great commandment:
When we love, we are right.
Love, Intimacy and Conversion
November 20, 2008 at 2:48 pm (Conversion, Holiness, Jesus, Love, Maturing in Christ, Prayer)
Re-reading Deep Conversion/Deep Prayer by Thomas Dubay. Good, but convicting stuff.
Dubay talks about intimacy with the indwelling Trinity as the key to conversion from self-love to Christ’s love.
“To put it simply: the main source of deep conversion is to fall in love with endless Beauty. A genuine person will gladly sacrifice for real love. Christic martyrs are in love. Jesus tortured to death on the Cross is the icon of perfect love, unconditional, selfless love. All the saints imitate him in their heroic virtue because they too are in love. Their concern, determination, and motivation are rooted in and arise from their intimacy with Triune Beauty which is purest and endless love (1 John 4:8).” (Dubay, Deep Conversion/Deep Prayer, p. 199)
I long to be holy, that is, I long to fulfill God’s command to love Him and to love my neighbor as myself. This requires conversion from my egocentric, self-interested way of “loving” to the pure, unselfish and perfect love of Christ. Holiness begins with falling in love with God. Dubay goes on to give a human example:
“If a man loves a woman authentically and profoundly, he would not for a moment entertain the idea of harming her or of tainting the beauty of her chastity. People intimate with God [in love with God] resist with all their might…sins.” (Dubay, p. 100)
How then do I fall in love and grow in this intimacy? Jesus shows me the way.
“[Jesus] habitually spent long solitudes absorbed in the most profound communion with the Father (Luke 5:16), long before dawn (Mark 1:35), even all though the night (Luke 2:19, 51) and led the apostles in continuous prayer for forty days in preparation for the coming of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:14) (Dubay, p. 100).
Jesus, who was one with the Father, needed to get away and spend time alone with His Father. What does that say about what we need? Don’t we need that time away with our Abba Father? Time away from the distractions of the world (our computers, cell phones, i-pods and other gadgets). Time alone to listen to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Time to be still, to learn to hear His voice so we can recognize it when we’re engaged in other tasks and focused on other people. Time to be intimate and to fall deeper in love with Him.
Thinking of it in terms of human intimacy. The most intimate moments between a husband and wife belong to them. They don’t occur in public, surrounded by people. Nor are those moments, moments of multi-tasking. They are moments of undivided attention, undivided self-giving. These intimate moments serve to strengthen the relationship when they are “a part.”
If Jesus, perfect in all ways, needed to spend intimate time away with His Father then I, so imperfect in so many ways, must also seek this same intimacy so that I can fall deeper in love with Him and love more deeply like Him.
Cinnamon Rolls and Mean Mom Unity
November 15, 2008 at 5:28 pm (Family, motherhood)
Scene: Claire, Ella and I, standing in line to get bagels at our favorite bagel place.
Claire: Mom, can we please get one of those cinnamon rolls, pleeaassssse?
Me: No, Claire. Not today.
Ella: Come on Mom, we’ll share it. Pllllllleeeeeeeezzzzz.
Me: I said no, Ella.
Claire: Yeah mom, we’ll share it. Pleeeaaasssee.
Me: I said not today, Claire
Claire: But why not?
Me: Why do you think?
Claire: Because it’s not a healthy breakfast. (insert pouty look here)
Me: And?…
Claire: We had ice cream and cake twice yesterday at two different birthday parties.
Me: Yep, that’s about all the sugar you need this week.
Claire: Come on Mom, it’s just one.
Me: Claire, we’re not getting a sweet roll. We came here to get bagels to take to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. If you ask me again… (insert the ”I’m serious, don’t say another word” look here)
Ella: (interjecting in her loud and dramatic four year old voice) You’re the meanest mom in the whole wide world.
[I shake my head and look for someplace to hide. I'm quite sure everyone in the store is watching us.]
Nice Lady next to me in line: (turning to Ella) – No sweety, you’re mom can’t be the meanest mom in the whole wide world. I’m the meanest mom in the whole world. My son told me so last night when I made him eat broccolli for dinner.
[Ella is stunned and silenced by the news that there are other moms just as mean as I am. ]
Nice Lady winks at me and says: We mean moms have to stick together you know.
What I’m thinking about today…
November 14, 2008 at 5:23 pm (Uncategorized)
A quote I once heard: Wisdom is truth rightly applied.
The courage of a friend who is willing to follow God even though she’s lost friends and the approval of her family.
The courage and joy of another friend who, after having many miscarriages, will for the first time give birth to a healthy baby girl today.
The sad fact that many things I get stressed over are “rich nation problems.”
Thomas Dubay’s book, Deep Conversion, Deep Prayer. I highly recommend it.
How very grateful I am for my family.
And finally, minestrone soup. That’s what I’m making for dinner tonight.
Without Him I am Nothing
November 9, 2008 at 7:10 pm (Jesus)
We sang one of my favorite songs after Communion today. It’s called “Breathe.” My Protestant friends would consider it an old song. Most of my cradle Catholic friends would say it’s a relatively new song to them. My pre-Vatican II Catholic friends have probably never listened to it before. Anyway…
It’s such a simple song with simple lyrics and a simple melody but it never fails to lead my heart into prayer and express the cry of my heart. The chorus says this: And I, I’m desperate for you. And I, I’m lost without you.”
That’s it. It’s so simple and yet it says it all.
I’m desperate for Jesus. I’m lost without Jesus.
On her Facebook profile page my neice, Hannah, puts it this way:
“Without Him I am nothing.”
Me too Hannah, me too.
Protected: Georgia Road Trip: Mothers, Daughters, Sisters, Cousins
November 8, 2008 at 6:28 pm (Uncategorized)
It’s not always black and white
November 7, 2008 at 2:15 am (Grace)
We want to put people into boxes. We become offended or turned off by something they say or do and label them. We want it to be simple; he’s good and she’s bad, she’s got a really good heart and well, he’s just plain selfish. But the thing is, life just doesn’t work that way. No one person’s deeds are all good nor all bad. And yet we are quick to judge, quick to suspect their motives. And once we’ve put someone or a group of people in that ”not so good” or not trustworthy or ”less spiritual” category we are tempted to see all they do through that lens. Even the good they do is questionable.
It’s sad that we do this. We do it with ourselves too. We want our motives and actions to be pure and loving. We examine them and label them. We describe what we do as being “in the spirit” or “in the flesh.” And while there is merit in examining our motives and and it’s important to examine our consciences there is a danger in seeing things in black and white.
You see we are made of flesh and spirit. Seldom are the motives behind what we do entirely pure. This is why we need grace. We can do wonderful things in the name and love of Jesus and even those deeds can be tainted by self-love. But God’s grace takes those deeds of love offered by faith and redeems them and us. This is the glory and wonder of living in God’s system of grace instead of the system of the law. No longer must our deeds be perfect in order to be accepted by God. Instead, our deeds, born of the spirit and tainted by our flesh, are accepted by Father and bring glory to him despite their imperfections. This by no means gives us permission to cease striving for perfect love. “What shall we say then, shall we continue to sin so that grace may abound. Certainly not…” (Romans 6:1). No, instead this system of grace should motivate us all the more to love like Jesus and extend this same grace to others.
We desperately need to see others through this same lens of grace. Our brothers and sisters in Christ will not always have the same agenda as we do. Our family members will not love us perfectly. Ministry and political leaders will not lead perfectly. Like you and me they are made of flesh and spirit. Even their best attempts to love “in the spirit” will probably be tainted by their own self-interest and self-love. They too are in the process of learning how to love.
We can’t write off individuals or groups of people simply because we encounter that self-interest and self-love. We can’t declare their efforts to lead, to follow, to love and befriend or to work for the Kingdom of God as null and void simply because we come in contact with their flesh. No, instead we are called to live in a system of grace. We are called to receive one another and our deeds in a spirit of love; we are called to see the image and love of Jesus in one another offering unmerited favor to each other despite our imperfect attempts to live in unity, love, holiness and peace.
What individuals or groups of people have you written off lately?
How is God calling you to extend grace so you can walk in unity and peace?
Recognizing Grace
November 6, 2008 at 2:39 am (Uncategorized)
“The greatest grace God can give someone is to send him a trial he cannot bear with his own powers–and then sustain him with his grace so he may endure to the end and be saved.”
St. Justin Martyr (100-165 AD)
