Good morning guys.
Coffee meeting day. Outlet Mall food court at 10am.
Next men’s group meeting June 3 at 7pm.
Last meeting we talked and talked and talked. We didn’t end up reading any scriptures at all but we talked about a lot. It was a great meeting. Here is a quick summary:
- What has God been doing in your life the last few weeks? We asked everyone around the table to look back and see if we could recognize any times God has interacted with us. Has He spoken to you? Has He directed you? We discussed how that might look or if we are recognizing it properly. Sometimes we tend to pray for something and when it suddenly resolves itself we can maybe write off the possibility that God did that for you because it took care of itself.
Or when help does present itself we might reject that help for some reason, not realizing it has been provided to us by God in answer to our prayer. Pride does a lot of damage that way. One of the hardest things I have tried to do is accept help when its offered. Even when I’m at my lowest, the hardest thing is to admit I need or could use help. So something I’ve been trying to do is to be grateful and accept help when it comes. That sounds so darn stupid to say. Of course it makes sense to accept help when you need it. But admitting that you NEED it is hard to do. It means overlooking or acknowledging your weakness, failure, dependency or burden on others. And accepting help never helps build up my self esteem or inner confidence. But it always leads to other unforseen blessings. So I put a smile on, and say Thank You to whoever is offering the help, and to God for sending the help. I don’t always do that well, but I’m trying. - Dale noticed that as we age, we seem to be more open and aware of our need for God. As younger people the demands of life tend to monopolize our attention. Jobs, budgets, families, sports, chores, etc. It all can pile up and bring you to the point of over capacity. It makes us believe that we have nothing left to give. No additional pieces of our souls to divvy up without sacrificing something else. As you get older and find more routine and structure in life, less things demand your time and you start to think more about God. The question ends up being, are we letting God guide us when we are busy in life, or just taking it all on ourselves.
Many couples will look at their lives and try to take a measurement to determine if they can fit in a child, or another child, or really just anything else. I am not sure if there is any kind of measurement that you can take to properly determine that. I think the measurement really is a way to say “I want this or that and don’t want to give it up”. So it might be a more self centered way to approach what room you have to offer in your life. However God makes your life fit the capacity He puts on you. I see it with anyone who has a sudden mouth to feed dropped in their life. Parents, children, pets, whatever. He makes our hearts grow to fit the need. There is always room when we get down to it.
I think the same thing happens when we prioritize God ahead of all of our challenges. He makes room where there didn’t seem to be any before. So if we are present enough and have Him prioritized correctly, it would not be a matter of giving up something to make room for Him. He puts everything in order for us when He is at the top of the list. That might be the most important lesson our children need to learn from us. It is counter-intuitive and intellectually misleading on its surface. But if we do nothing else for them as parents, that might be the one thing that will give them the framework to find their way back to Him when they get lost in the chaos of life. The trick is being able to teach them why its important to prioritize God. Do we even know for ourselves how to explain it beyond our own circumstances?
Paul shared a prayer he got from Fr. Jim when he was asking about how to get our children back to church. Its a good one.
“Lord, show me how I can show the people whom I love, how much I love them.”
So simple. Just amazing. Love it. - We talked a little bit about how some people need to have some sort of event in their lives to trigger a journey towards faith. Life can seem to be easier if you don’t spend time and energy on things you don’t care to understand, like God. That led us to asking what our personal journey to faith has been like. No two stories are alike in this way, but there are clusters of similarities and circumstances. But at some point anyone who is honestly looking towards God and trying to hear His voice has to encounter something that motivates them to take the next step.
When you get closer to God, you are closer to the light. The closer you are, the easier it is to see your own faults and recognize them as faults that need to be addressed. The further away you are, the darker it is and the easier it is to not see yourself in the light. The easier it is to convince yourself that none of it matters. Its not a big deal if i do this or that. No one knows, no one cares, it is not worse than that other guy so I am still ok. In the darkness away from God we use others to judge how we are doing. The closer to God you get, you drop that standard and focus only on how He will judge you. Most people don’t want to be judged or to have a spotlight shone on their own deficiencies and sins. It doesn’t actually make sense to want to have that exposed. It’s not really in our nature is it. Like a glutton for punishment situation. Why would anyone want to keep going towards the light of God if it results in them seeing more and more clearly how bad they are?
Is there any point when the scale tips and it doesn’t get worse and worse? Probably not. But here is the thing about that. There is a lot more going on than just self-depreciation. When you walk towards His light, you see the good things too. You see the blessings He has give you. You feel the love He has for you. And you start to need that. It makes you work on yourself and stops you from comparing notes against others. It makes life fall into order and make sense. You still have pain, still have suffering, still have temptations. Nothing has really changed, except you. You deal with the problems of life differently. The same fender bender would have happened anyway, but you are a different person. You see things in a different light. You see the value in people and their value to God. These things in life are still important, but now they are no longer MORE important than your salvation, or the salvation of the guy who ran into you. Trivial things get sorted out. Eternal things need our effort more. And we all have unique challenges to overcome in our journey. - One of the ladies in the church shared something about Mother Theresa with me. She would pray prayers of petition to God when she prayed the Rosary or Novena’s. The first 9 prayers would carry requests. The 10th prayer was always a prayer of gratitude for His answers to the first 9. She wasn’t waiting for a response or results. She just believed so firmly that He would answer the prayers that she confidently included a ‘thank you’. What a tremendous example of faith. She died in 1997 and still is touching people with her amazing faith.
- We talked about what it takes to light a fire of faith in people of our parish. How volunteers end up burning out over time and what the path of least resistance does to the body of the church when it means people are happy being on the sidelines. Why do we do that? Lots of reasons probably. Some don’t want to take on extra commitment. Some are afraid of what they don’t already know. Some have done it before and still have scars from the negative experiences that can often accompany those who take on volunteer roles. Many don’t actually realize how important it is to the parish to have a healthy and motivated community. Most who have not yet been involved, don’t realize the calling can inspire their faith in so many strange ways. It’s like describing the colour red, or the flavor of an apple to someone who has never seen or tasted it. You have to try it to know how good it can be. Not all of the apples are good ones, and you will end up with favorite types eventually. But if you never try one, you will never really know.
We are in need of some dynamic Holy Spirit filled motivational leadership to help our priest and parish to inspire the sleepers. Maybe that is you? Maybe its your neighbor? Maybe not. I would say that we all will have small opportunities to be that person now and then for others. It is important that we are open to God’s voice and follow where He leads us in those cases. Maybe it will be just one small day, one person, one event, one conversation. But if He puts it before you to deal with, embrace it and thank Him for it. - We talked about spiritual warfare and how Satan tries to oppress us when we are finding our way to God. He is diligent and will try anything to distract, discourage and disappoint us, to prevent us from continuing. These things can come in all kinds of forms, but the end result is usually the same. You end up feeling unworthy, unqualified, and shamed. It happens to all of us. Some of that is certainly our own conscience beating us up, but that is driven by hands that don’t want us to succeed. How easy we can be to push off the path.
So fortify yourselves and have faith that God loves you no matter what, God needs you to follow Him, and He will give you what you need when you need it, in order to do His good work. You will know Him by the fruits.
Pray for each other. Lately I have been asking God to have guardian angels wrap their wings around us to shelter us from oppression and provide a measure of peace so we can rest and recharge to keep going. Its a nice thing to imagine. The wings of a guardian angle sheltering us from the storm. Pray for Russ as well. He is someone who gets attacked more and more. He needs to have our prayers for the work he does in God’s creation. - Pentecost Sunday is/was May 24. Did you know that we used to celebrate it as a 9 day feast where we closed out the Easter celebration? It used to be a much bigger part of our liturgical calendar. And maybe we should still spend that time on it personally. This is the celebration where the Holy Spirit was sent from God to bless the Apostles with the gifts they needed to get the church started up. It is a time where we re-present that event that is typically the birth event of the church. I don’t know if any of us focused on how that touches us or how we can try and find ways to accept the Holy Spirit again with confidence and boldness. But its a special time of year for us and should not go un-noticed. Even though this is after that Sunday, we can still pray on it for the remaining days of the 9 that we used to celebrate it. That takes us up to the Tuesday before our next meeting. Say some prayers about how you would want to have the tounges of fire gift that was the Holy Spirit to the Apostles. Ask what you will about it. Just try to give your attention to it every day of our 9 day celebration of it. Listen to sermons, podcasts, read the bible about it. Try to make it make sense in your life. And pay attention to what God does with you. We can talk about that on June 3.
Again, next meeting is June 3 at 7pm. We will be going through the summer again this year. So meetings will remain on 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of the month. Next meeting we will start to look at the parables. So bring the things you have learned over the years about them. Every time i read one i find new layers and new connections. So I would love to hear about all of yours.
In the meantime, here is an important video from the Irish about summer.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1BFYeSPGi4/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Chris
