theROCK

What Kind of World Do You Want to Build?

What kind of world do you want to build?

I posed this question to a woman I am currently mentoring in discipleship. It is a question I find myself pondering a lot. It guides much of the ministry work I do here and in my personal life. What kind of a world do I want for my kids? And how am I helping to build that?

The question was posed during a conversation we had regarding a T Shirt I recently made and started wearing around. The shirt says “Free Prayer – Honestly, please ask”. It was inspired by the buttons some of our parishioners wore at our summer festival, offering prayer to festival goers. One of the participants in the current Missionary Discipleship Training Group asked if the group thought there would be any takers if people wore those button out in public. To which I responded: “I don’t know. I’ll make a shirt and find out.”

The point of the shirt isn’t just a sociological experiment or a fun little challenge. It’s part of my answer to that initial question. What kind of world do I want to build?

I recently took a Target run to buy school supplies for my own kid for the first time. My little 5 year old, going off to school. Being the emotional mama that I am, I started crying. My baby girl. Going to K-4. Where has the time gone?! She’s basically got one foot out the door already! And as fellow school shoppers passed me by I got averted gazes and weirded-out looks. Not one person asked if I was okay or sympathized with what was obviously a young mother’s breakdown over her growing children.

What kind of world do I want to build? I want to build a world where we are constantly supporting each other with prayer. Where we reach out when we see someone in need, not pretend not to notice. Where people readily risk being awkward for the sake of being loving. Where seeing people pray for each other, right there in the Target aisle isn’t weird or unusual, but is in fact the norm. I want my kids to grow up feeling and believing that praying for strangers is perfectly normal and is in fact beautiful.

So I’ll keep wearing my T Shirt as one small step to build the world I want to live in, knowing I am taking many other such steps to improving this world with the love of Christ.

What kind of world do you want to build, dear reader? And how are you helping to build that?

Blessed

The Scriptural account of the encounter between Mary and her cousin Elizabeth, is celebrated on the Feast of the Visitation. The meeting of the Old and New Testament represented in these blessed women gives us a glimpse  of the power of God, who brings new life to them in their anticipated sons to be born. It was difficult to envision the tremendous joy that the two experienced until I came across this more recent image. Their joy is contagious. Jesus is in their midst, and these two women truly know they are blessed.

Have you ever thought about the word blessed and its meaning? I have recently meditated on it. For me, it is the belief that we are chosen by his love and surrounded by his presence every moment. When we realize how we are blessed, each of us in our own ways, we begin to see the hand of God in our lives and how his love sustains us. At times this can be challenging.

While the prayer after communion invites us to recognize the presence of Christ among us in the Eucharist, we must remember that the presence of Christ is also discovered in others. He asks us to serve him by serving others. Mary's service to Elizabeth by her visit remains a model for the Christian who wishes to meet Christ in daily life. This is a wonderful challenge for you and me; namely, to seek Christ in others, to know that Christ is living in them, and to become aware of how Christ is transforming them. Let us make each day extraordinary by Mary's example. You are blessed. I am blessed. Let us live that reality.

A Supernatural Way of Living

Are you ready to die? This was the question the professor silently wrote on the chalkboard the first evening of my formation class in servant leadership. My thoughts ran immediately to answer, “Well, I’m certainly not ready yet!” As it turns out, he wasn’t referring to a physical death, but rather an orientation of the heart to be willing to do the Lord’s will. He was really asking us if we were willing to die into Christ, His Church, and His Mission.

Jesus models for each of us how He, as the good shepherd, lays down his own life for each of us, His sheep. Offering our owns lives for the love of others is Jesus’ vocational request for each one of us. This is not a skill to be perfected with practice, or a natural human attribute that only some of us are given, but rather a supernatural way of living through the power of grace that each of us is destined for.