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| Fr. Eric Olsen, my pastor, at Midnight Xmas Mass 2018. This is a Christmas devotion where the faithful "rock" baby Jesus to sleep before taking their baby Jesus figurine home or putting it back at the church's manger. |
I admire those people that seem to have endless faith. People that have rarely questioned their sense of hope for their Creator and their world. It appears, to me, both ridiculously simple and the most extraordinary thing to hold-faith.
I have often felt guilty for what appears to be a lack of faith in God. I see a broken world and I have wondered time and time again where Love itself has been?
I see my own family story, riddled with marital separation and the pain upstream and downstream of that, confusing political messages of my worth as an "illegal alien" child, financial strife, and a surplus of blessed adversity. I need not add the pain that I am limited to experiencing through God-given sympathy and compassion.
It seems my love story with God has been one of finding the Creator in chaos. However, I admit, that story is often narrated with a lot of anger, confusion and disbelief that I am actually loved and seen.
Last week in prayer, I journaled with past Sunday readings and felt drawn to 1 Corinthians's famous little line of "But by the grace of God I am what I am".
Here are the glorious scribbles that one can achieve when you refuse to switch to a better prayer time than 11 p.m. on Wednesdays: 😛
It's a curious thing to see the stark contrast between what praying with "grace" brought and what praying with " I am what I am" brought. Both are realities of me, of my relationship with others, of my relationship with my Creator. For me, God seems to dwell between hope and fear.
God dwelling in the fear that brings me call my mother and tell her I need to leave my PhD because anxiety/depression has not allowed me to get out of bed and eat for consecutive days after only being moved in a month before. God dwelling in the suffocating darkness of that moment.
God dwelling in the hope that has brought me with a full and vulnerable heart to CLA.
Does God dwell in chaos for you? In both fear and hope? How? When? What have you learned through that?
I have often felt guilty for what appears to be a lack of faith in God. I see a broken world and I have wondered time and time again where Love itself has been?
I see my own family story, riddled with marital separation and the pain upstream and downstream of that, confusing political messages of my worth as an "illegal alien" child, financial strife, and a surplus of blessed adversity. I need not add the pain that I am limited to experiencing through God-given sympathy and compassion.
It seems my love story with God has been one of finding the Creator in chaos. However, I admit, that story is often narrated with a lot of anger, confusion and disbelief that I am actually loved and seen.
Last week in prayer, I journaled with past Sunday readings and felt drawn to 1 Corinthians's famous little line of "But by the grace of God I am what I am".
Here are the glorious scribbles that one can achieve when you refuse to switch to a better prayer time than 11 p.m. on Wednesdays: 😛
It's a curious thing to see the stark contrast between what praying with "grace" brought and what praying with " I am what I am" brought. Both are realities of me, of my relationship with others, of my relationship with my Creator. For me, God seems to dwell between hope and fear.
God dwelling in the fear that brings me call my mother and tell her I need to leave my PhD because anxiety/depression has not allowed me to get out of bed and eat for consecutive days after only being moved in a month before. God dwelling in the suffocating darkness of that moment.
God dwelling in the hope that has brought me with a full and vulnerable heart to CLA.
Does God dwell in chaos for you? In both fear and hope? How? When? What have you learned through that?
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