Converted anxiety is hope. Anxiety is dreadful expectation; hope is expectant desire. They are like cousins to each other. Pray for the conversion of your fretful anxiety into promising hope. If you are anxious just now, you are almost already hopeful.
What will we do with the blessings God gives us in answer to prayer? When we pray and God heals us, what will we do with our restored health? When we cry out of our need and God meets that need, what will we do with the resources that have come to us in answer to our prayer?
Here, in Malawi, those two problems often do walk hand in hand. The people in this part of Africa have suffered from flooding in 2015 which severely depleted their crops. Furthermore, in 2016, the sun relentlessly baked down on the remaining seeds which were harvested from the previous year. This has totally wiped out any possibility of growing food.
People in trauma need our presence and our prayer rather than our preaching. We will bear a much more comforting witness to someone facing deep loss by simply being with them, and in so doing, representing God Emmanuel – God with us – by our being with them. Not by our words, but by our presence.
In Advent, reflect on a commitment you are considering accepting, or a commitment that needs renewing. In building the house of your life on the rock of God’s committed love, you may discover that you are called to commit; that you cannot claim the Life that God desires for you without it.
The house was only the basic frame so you covered
We will be a more luminous epiphany of the love of Christ not only when we love, but when we recognize Christ present in the loving hearts of others, whatever their beliefs or understanding of God. – Brother Mark Brown
The gospel Jesus proclaims is that in God’s economy everyone will be fed, but we have to be willing to share from the riches that God has given us. In order to do that we have to stop and recognize the goodness that God has given us in our lives.
On the cross, exposed and vulnerable, Jesus draws the whole world in a loving embrace. Everything hangs, everyone is held here. Jesus holds the people of Charlestown and Ferguson and Baltimore and all around the globe. Jesus listens to the grieving and grappling, the terrorized and troubled, the frightened and crying. Jesus listens to all the heartache, all the questions. On the cross Jesus bears the weight, the weight of the world, holding us all in his wounded hands.
Christ is all in all. He is here symbolically in a stone altar He is here sacramentally in bread and wine. He is here spiritually in hearts lifted up and returned to us renewed, transformed, consecrated.