Our true selves as a reflection of God

Everything that God has made is a reflection of Him in some way.  Every tree, bug, bird, or person expresses a thought of God and therefore is a vision of God.  A tree or a flower or a bug is what it was created to be and by simply being what God created it to be is itself perfectly following the will of God.  A tree doesn't try to be a bird or a bug try to be a flower, they simply are as God intended them to be.

Human beings on the other hand are not content to be what God made us to be or do what God created us to do.  If God created us to be an accountant in a small town with a simple life with a family, we aren't happy.  We want to be more important, in a bigger town, with a wildly successful family.  We put on airs and we sin to fool ourselves and those around us into thinking we are someone else.  Instead of being saints where we are, we waste time being someone God doesn't know.

Becoming who we are meant to be

I want to recommend that you read Thomas Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation, at the very least read pages 34-36.  For me these pages hold the most profound idea, that we waste our lives try to construct this illusionary self.  We stick labels and experiences on ourselves to make us appear to be who we want the world to see us as.  We all do this.  We do things, we say things, we wear things that we think reflect who we are when they are really who think we are.  And it isn't just the secular world who do this.  Have you ever worn a cross so other people know you are Christian?  Carried a Bible and wanted people to see it?  When I joined the Secular Franciscans I was disappointed at first to find out we no longer wore habits.

We can not make ourselves, we have to discover ourselves.  Who we are in God.

Good Friday - Sitting in Silence

What a beautiful and peaceful way to start the day.  The birds are singing outside and all is quiet here in the church.  All is dark except the light behind the tabernacle.  Thank you Lord for this time.

I love you and want to always be with you.  I want to do Your will, and only Your will.  I want to be small and insignificant in the eyes of the world, but to be Your friend.  I don't need riches or comfort, I need You.  I want that enduring faith until the end and then to be united with you.

Until then I will look for You everyday in those around me.  I know a piece of You is all of them and it my job to seek it and find it.  I will serve You through them.  I will love You through them.

Waiting

I sit here my Beloved with You.  I am such a poor attendant left sitting here with You as your trial begins.  I begrudge the small amount of sleep I will miss sitting here with You who died for me.  Tomorrow I think I should get some great prize for skipping meat and cutting down on what it eat, but You were whipped for me beaten for me and then died for me.  Can't I wait just a bit longer, sit with You as You suffer?

There is no prize on earth for sitting here with You, I hope there is a prize for me in heaven.  I so want to want to suffer for You here on earth, to do some loving deed to prove to You how much I love You.  But I don't do it and by that I do show how much I love the one who is love itself.  I can only do the smallest things for You.  If You ever need me to do something great, You will have do it through me.  I am too weak and afraid.  Only in You can I ever hope to be strong.

How about that, I sit here with the one who loves me most and who suffered and died for me and I say if You want something more from me you have to help me.  I wish it weren't true, I wish I was strong and brave.  I wish I could but when I try I fail, when you help me I can do anything.  I think of the day I was in Rome and going up the stairs that you walked up to see Pilot.  I was about half way up and thought I wished I hadn't started.  Why?  Because my knees hurt, a bit.  Then I thought about You and what You went through on those stairs, what you heard, and I was ashamed.  What I did was so small, nothing in comparison to even what others have done and I almost gave up at a bit of knee pain.

I know I am so flawed, so broken.  Heal me Lord, make me more like You.  You who are all love, all beauty, and all wisdom.  Mold me Lord in your image and make me strong.  Help me Oh Lord to do Your will.

Pick up your mat John 5:1-41

Today's readings give us good indication of how we should act and what the signs will be that we are helping to bring to fruition God's plan.  We should bring the water flowing from the temple to the world.  If we do the world will be like a watered garden.  If we truly lived God's plan for us there would be no want or selfishness in the world.

Jesus said that came to fulfill and not abolish the law so the literal interpretation the Pharisees have of the law must be incorrect.  How could he law of a loving God allow a man to stay ill one more day simply because it was the sabbath?  We should be careful using the law of God to be selfish or to feel better about ignoring the needs of those around us.  Would Jesus really want us to make doing drug free a condition of giving someone the food they need?  I don't think so.  His law is compassion itself.

Leaving it to God John 4:43-56

When reading today's Gospel I thought how I would have probably continued to beg the Lord to come with me, thinking He had to touch the child to make him well.  I would have been disappointed that I had failed.  How often does God have a plan to work something in our lives but we don't believe because we had a different idea about how it should work?

I wonder how many times I recited God's plan for m because I wanted Him to work in a different way.  When I think about it, it's those times when I haven't been expecting Him to work and there didn't resist Him, that God has made the biggest changes in my life and in my family.  It's been those times when I followed Him not knowing where he would lead me that I followed Him most closely.

We need to allow God to lead us wherever he wants to.  Something may look scary or bad to us but if we believe we will take that leap of faith and follow where He leads.    I will do my best to remember this passage.

Not as Man sees does God see

We look at the superficial appearance.  We see the clothes, the house, the car, the family, God sees the heart.  We  can never say by looking at someone on the street if they are a sinner or not.  Just because the person is poor or is homeless we want to say that they must have done something wrong.  They made poor decisions or are addicted to something.  This may all very well be true but God still loves them and they may be a better person than you.

I met a man on a street retreat in Austin who had been a pastor of a church in Houston, he was offered a mega church but God spoke to him and he sold all he had and walked or hitched rides to Austin.  He gathers people on the street around him and ministered to them.  They formed a camp for people trying to get off drugs or with mental health issues.  Years before I met another man who did a similar thing but he gathers the mentally ill and disabled.

You don't know when you look at the person next to you if they are someone you can teach about God or someone who can teach you.  If you approach them with an open heart and mind, God will show you.