God Bless Us

The snow is melting!  How can something be so beautiful and yet be so troublesome?  When more and more of that white stuff appeared, I definitely felt impatient and I had to do very little of the shoveling!  A lot of other people did some back-breaking work all winter – and then, of course, there were those who did the snow plowing through the night or during the early morning hours.  It does seem that beauty and problems come in pairs with each other.  May God bless all of us as we face each new day (or night!).

Little Kids

Saint Francis just “blows me away” sometimes.  Yesterday I read one of his admonitions in which he wrote:  “There is no one who does good.  Not even one.”

My take on that spontaneously is:  but I do good sometimes, and I even compliment others when they do good.   Oh, Rose Mae, how far you are from full faith!

Francis had preceded the above statement with a reference to something Saint Paul had said:  “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit.”  What is this mystery that only God is good and that any good we see in creation comes from God?

Is it like a little kid who is learning for the first time to hit a ball with a bat?

The little kid’s father holds the bat with the little kid and when the ball comes near, the father (with the little kid holding on) swings the bat and hits the ball.  I dare say that the little kid thinks that he was the one who made the ball go!

It seems that God tolerates our misconceptions that we are the ones doing good.  I would guess that God would prefer an openness on our part to give credit where credit is due.  Our union with God is there but we are still like little kids.

Who is God? And Who Am I?

Good Morning!   I notice that many times we like to bring God down to our size.  I was recently in a church where the Blessed Trinity is depicted as a father of about the age sixty, seated with a young man of about the age of thirty, and a dove hovering over both of them.  They were dressed in regal robes and wore kingly crowns. This certainly does not appeal when In our times we have learned that what exists are hundreds of billions of stars, and we are still counting, measuring space in terms of light years, etc.  Who/what is this God whom I credit with having originated our evolving universe?

Of course, our little minds cannot fathom the bigness of God.  One thing I think would be helpful, is not to start with ourselves, for example:  “This person is kind and good; God is like that, kind and good.”  Rather, start with God:  “God is love; my ability to love is minuscule compared with the ability of the One who is the Source of all love in the world.”

Beautiful and Good

This morning, November 2, 2010, I just came back from voting and so got to have the experience of the fresh air and sunshine of our beautiful Minnesota. As I look around me I see God my Creator speaking loudly from everything I look at – the trees as they ready themselves for winter, the white puffy clouds in front of the blue sky, and the gushing water of the Mississippi. Existence speaks to me of the primacy of God the Father; this Person of God self-expresses as the Word; that which exists and self-expresses is full of life and change, the Spirit. I see everything  imaging God to me of this three-fold relationship within the Blessed Trinity. It is beautiful and good. May God be praised!