Tuesday of Holy Week

In the past two weeks I have gotten two birthday presents in the mail.  They have both been wonderful surprises, especially since my birthday was over a month ago.    My children think it is really funny that I just keep getting gifts even though my birthday is long past.   I just enjoy them, and feel very blessed.

God's grace is quite the same as those unexpected birthday gifts.  If you live in a sense of awareness of God working in your life,  everything is gift (grace).   Every day in little ways and sometimes in very grand ways God reveals his love for us through graces in our lives.  Which doesn't mean that when we make ourselves aware of God working in our lives everything is sunshine and rainbows.   Sometimes, in the words of one of my favorite authors Flannery O'Connor God's grace can be "dark and disturbing" too.

Sometimes God's grace comes in a way that makes us realize how much we need Him.  It is revealed in our weaknesses and our failings, which bring us to our knees in prayer and turn us back to His loving arms.

I am sitting here this morning on a cold rainy morning, which makes my arthritis flare and every joint in my body ache, waiting for it to be time to go to my Zumba Class.  I know that it will take all the energy I can muster, and a little extra grace from God, to make myself go to Zumba this morning,  But I also know that in God's dark and disturbing way if I do go there will be a benefit for my overall health and well being.

How will you be aware of God's grace in your life today?

Pax  

Monday of Holy Week

I belong to a band made up of parents of children at the school where my daughter (previously known as the angelbaby, until she hit her teen years) is in the 8th grade.  Some of us have been playing an instrument for years, and can easily read music, and others are relatively new to the instrument they are playing and are just beginning to get the hang of reading music.

We practice together once a week.  But those of us who don't practice more often than that feel as though we are falling behind, myself included some weeks.  We have to work at our own parts so that when we get together we can work at sounding like a real band sounds and not a group of people who are trying to play instruments they are just learning how to play.  We have also found that when we play with enthusiasm and joy,  our sound is much better than when we play like timidly.  

I think the same thing is true of the spiritual life.  We are all at a different point in our spiritual life, and when we come to a point in the Church year like Holy Week, the more time we have put into our own spiritual development, like we should have been doing throughout the 40 days of lent, the more We will come together as One during this week.

Don't just sit back and let Holy Week happen to you,  enter into it with all of your enthusiasm and joy, and not with timidity.  Even if you haven't been practicing as much as you wish you had been the last 40 days.

Pax