“Love the Lord with all your heart and all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind” and “Love your neighbour as yourself.” Luke 10:27
Mother Teresa had such a beautiful heart and way about her, that one could reflect a lifetime on the great love in her heart for others. Even though she lived the light of Jesus, she had a deep, profound longing to fulfill the calling God had for her, which surpassed what is humanly possible for most, she still felt a darkness of soul. I sense that she knew deeply the that love for God and others was far deeper than a mind and soul was able to reasonably grasp. We live in a world of knowledge and understanding, but God I suspect wants from each of us a deeper wisdom of the true meaning of love.
At the start of a new year, many crave new beginnings, new start, new ways of being and receiving a fresh start in spirit. This past year has been a struggle in the workplace for me and others, more than I have wanted to accept. We can get caught in emotions, thoughts and things around us that can seek to pull us away from God’s love. The challenges grew and the answers were few but understandably so, as my father used to say, “You can’t squeeze blood from a stone.”. This past while I have found little jealousies creeping up in me, that weren’t there much in the past. It’s the tiredness, the exhaustion of the demands in the workplace, that may be out of sync with God’s will for me. It’s my lot before me, that causes me to crave in minute ways the leisure of others but it is not envy. Envy is a sadness at another’s good state and wanting it and wanting them harmed or feel pleasure in another’s lack in some way and that is far from my heart. Jealousy, describes it more fully, it is that sense of wanting even in small ways what others have for myself. The reality for me is, I enjoy goodness for others, but it is my tiredness and discouragement that reigns and wells in me like a river a rising ever so gently, trying to go unnoticed. I recognize it for what it is, the wrong turn of the destiny that God wants for me.
In this I find myself, as I usually do, gravitating towards God in ways that are deeper in wisdom. It is becoming more natural for me to turn to the Saints for guidance but not necessarily to make sense of things yet instead to guide me in the direction of purity and love. In the past it has been natural for me to place my needs at God’s altar, but I also see the need to grow in a trust so deep that one can strain in it. The very short version of the depth of it, was seeing the world through the depth and breadth of the eyes of God. I needed to realize that the only one that could embrace all the children and meet their needs was God. Not I. God is saviour, not I. I needed to hear God saying, “Tend to the child before you in each moment with only my love, and I will work through it all.”. I needed to listen to St. Igantuis when I needed to make a decision, saying, “Look at the decision as though all the parties are unknown to you and then look at again at if you were at the end of your life.”. It was then I knew.
Love is patient. Love is kind. For many years I try to live out each day by asking God to help me grow in love. He answers me by guiding me to see my gifts and help others see theirs. He answers me, and asks me to place my sins at His alter and forgive sins against me. He answers me by welling up in me the ways in which to live to serve His particular call for me. As I review the chapters of my life, so many fell short of pure love, but many rose to the occasion of living in God’s light setting the darkness aside.
This year, with a newness of Spirit, I want to become deeper aware of who Jesus is, in my life and in others. “The Lord is high above all nations, his glory is above the heavens…he raises the poor from the dust, and lifts the needy from the ash heap.” Psalm 113:4, 7 As I come with an empty heart, as Mary taught me many years ago, I hope I can hear God’s plan. For I have come to know the beauty of coming to God’s altar without a plan and know the beauty of my incomprehensibility and feel consoled in it. I pray that I may come to see like the John the Baptist, a cousin to Jesus, who knew Him, but came to find a deeper way of realizing the great sense of who Jesus was and is. Jesus who came to save us. Jesus born and became incarnate so that we could share in God’s love to the full. I want to walk with Mary, and say yes to where God calls me, even if I myself am afraid or hesitant or if others are unable to see. I want to feel glory in the desert knowing God is beckoning to something greater. God will be my heart, my soul and my eyes to move me forward. What a beautiful a journey it will be. Blessings to your calling in the wilderness of God’s love. Blessings in our becoming. Amen.
Peace and prayers,
Claudia
Ournourishedsoul