Sitting on my office desk is a gift from my friend Tess. She cut out one of the pencil sketches made by a New York artist of Jesus playing with a baby, and placed it inside a beautiful frame to remind me of how Jesus sees me and how I can be with Him. I alwalys stare at the picture when the walls close in on me in the office, for it shows me how I can run to Jesus like a child and be a delight to Him.
I met up with a law school friend a couple of weeks ago. Though she is older than me and a product of Catholic education, she told me that she only discovered the rosary this year and has been praying it regularly. She says that she does not understand the mysteries but she clings to them, memorizing them like a child, and this has given her so much peace in her advancing single life. Come to think of it, because I've wanted to understand it and analyze it, I haven't memorized the new Mysteries of the Light yet.
The e-mail I forwarded yesterday from Max Lucado paints another picture of the Father wanting to play with His children. How long has it been since I had allowed God to be God? This morning during my prayer time I was all apologies to God, for even my time with Him is disturbed by text messages and wandering thoughts about the things I have to do. I felt His hands on both my cheeks this morning and heard Him telling me, "My daughter, before
you run off again attempting to please me, I want you to know that what would truly delight me is if you could BE STILL for a few minutes before me."
"Be still and know that I am God", the Lord told the Psalmist. I am re-learning this lesson, that no matter how good the things I busy myself with are, if I cannot stop long enough to abide in the Lord in complete abandon, then I am spending my time on what's merely second best.
1 Corinthians 13:1-3
"If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a
resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy
and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as
to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away
everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do
not have love, I gain nothing."
I went to Mass today with a desire to spend quality time with the only King of my Heart, the Lover of my Soul, my tower of refuge and strength. I felt His unconditional love despite my faults, weaknesses, imperfections, mistakes. If He were one to count these, He would have
given up on me a long time ago. More than ever, I want to go back to the beginning of my love story with God, when I trusted Him more and relied less on my own judgment and strength. The writer Elisabeth Elliott, already a grandmother, said that she finds delight in being a child before God.
I hope to learn to believe with childlike faith and to surrender everything to the Lord more fully now. Maybe that is the secret to a joyful, peaceful heart. :)
