Pastor's View - Mar 9, 2010 11:04 - 0 Comments

Where Does One Find God? II

Look back and thank God.
Look within and find God!
Look forward and trust God.
Look around and serve God.

How’s your Forty Days going? Remember my homily two weeks ago and then again on Ash Wednesday? The significance of entering into the Forty Days of penance is to enter Forty Days of seeking reform of life and relationships. We’re 18 days into the pilgrimage. How’s it going for you?

The poem above can be divided into four “signposts” for the pilgrimage.

I. Look back and thank God.
Last week we looked “back,” to see the road that has brought us where we are. But, if we only look back, we’ll never move forward.
II. Look within and find God!
A second signpost on this Lenten pilgrimage is to look within to discover where God has been present and is present in our walk. Just as the tears of looking back can be of sorrow as well as of joy, we need to recognize God is present in both the obvious emotional moments as in the “absences” when we’re learning to walk alone. Whose wisdom and light is it that guides us to make the hard decisions deep within us? It is there, at the core of the onion which is our life that we can find the face of God.

Elijah (AKA Elias) went walking 40 days in the desert after an attempt to die because the world was against him. (1 Kings 19) God wasn’t finished with Elijah and called him out. God’s voice, “Elijah, what are you doing here?” Elijah responded to God’s question with his own problem. God then said “Go out and stand before me on the mountain.” An earthquake shook him to his core! A hurricane blew! A fire consumed the mountain! And the still breeze that came after defined Elijah’s new mission. Go to your mountain top and your cave to see and listen and hear!

What have been your earthquakes, your consuming passions and hurricanes? How have you confronted such in your life? Look within and find God.

Lent is the time to sit in the backyard, or on Franklin Mountain and to be quiet. You know the storms and struggles. Now is the time to be still. When our heart is allowed to go quiet, we can hear God.

So there’s your seven day deepening for this week! One memory or story a day of the passions and storms sitting quiet after each: “N., What are you doing here?”

fr. Charles

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