GOD ALWAYS HAS A BIGGER TABLE

When was the last time you came to a restaurant that was full and the only table that they could offer was to share the other end of a large table where there was already another seated couple? You did not have the option of going somewhere else for lunch so you accepted.

 

One time the gentleman at the other end of the table cringed when we sat down. He was more than a little uncomfortable that there were strangers at the other end of the table. In another instance, the couple started making introductions and welcoming us into their city. 

 

What a wonderful image to think about how our God actually works. We are invited to sit at the table with God, but God always keeps enlarging the table. More and more different people are invited to sit down with God and with us!

 

Always think of God’s table like the table of your grandmother. It did not matter how many people dropped by, she could always have them seated and could whip up a meal in a half hour. You probably remember when the kids were moved to a smaller table from the playroom. Another uncle and aunt had dropped by and Grandma could always find room. Squeeze a little bit more!

 

Here you are sitting at God’s table and he invites the two young men who live down the block from you, but they are heavy into the drugs. You never felt comfortable with then on earth. What are you supposed to do in heaven?

 

Then God shuffles the table and invites so many refugees and their children. All these displaced people are told to sit down. They may have had no territory to call home but here God makes space for all of them. 

 

The table is getting a little crowded!

 

As they table is being filled up, how are you feeling?

 

This image shows us that God is a welcoming God. We humans may be very narrow in whom we consider to be acceptable but the heart and the embrace of God always grows larger. 

 

Too many ‘born’ Christians have so much difficulty with the largeness of God. They only want to work with the people they feel are acceptable. Too often they have a strong desire for moral purity in whom they consider worthwhile.

 

Whether or not anyone pays attention to what God is doing, you can be assured that God will upset our way of judging and evaluating human beings. God’s ways are not to make human beings feel warm and secure. God’s ways are meant to stretch the human heart to love all people; especially those different from ourselves,  with the same love that God has for them. God will always upset our apple cart!

 

Today would be a good time for you to imagine what it will be like when God brings you to sit at the table. Who will be seated around you?

 

 

 

 

TAKE A LOOK AT YOUR HANDS

                   

 

Take a good look at your hands. They have so much to tell you about your relationship with life and with God.

 

Now, we all take our hands for granted but they are an amazing piece of machinery and a means of communication. One of our men was involved with a perogy supper to raise money to help Ukrainian refugees. He pointed out as he worked beside a Ukrainian baba ( Grandmother) who had lost the use of her right arm through a stroke. “She could make cabbage rolls with her left hand like nobody’s business. And I was struggling to roll the cabbage with two hands!”

 

Our hands are most significant when they are used for caring for another human being. They are truly blessed and give blessing through compassion for others.

 

Blessed are the open hands that help little ones pick themselves off the pavement when they have fallen off their bike. Blessed are the hands that dry tears from frightened eyes.

 

Blessed are the hands that reach beyond the barriers of culture, religion, nationality and economic classes. How wonderful the hands that move smoothly through these barriers that human beings have set up to divide themselves from one another. Where people have put up barriers (you shall not step over the barrier!), these hands move through these barriers in compassion and understanding. 

 

Blessed are the hands that help others and seek nothing in exchange. These are hands that love and share freely, with no expectations that the favour be returned.

 

Blessed are the hands that lift up a brother when he is down with drug addiction. These understanding hands know how black and discouraging it is to be caught in the trap of drug addiction. And these hands lift a very desperate brother up!

 

Blessed are the hands of a teenager assisting an elderly grandmother as she tries to walk to the breakfast table. What patience and gentleness in those hands!

 

Blessed are the hands that are preparing sandwiches for the homeless today. These hands may not see the hungry men and women coming to pick up a lunch but these hands butter the bread with understanding.

 

Blessed are the hands that hug the widow who has lost her husband of sixty-five years. No words. Just the assurance of care and understanding; just the hands of patience for the dark times of grief and loss.

 

Now sit in silence with open hands. How many times have your hands been a source of blessing? How many times have your hands been a touch of the goodness of God?

 

 

 

 

 

MISTAKES AND GROWTH IN FAITH

 

One of the most useful things I have learnt in the past decade is that a person will never learn, never make an effort to improve, if they are comfortable. How many times have you worked with someone who makes the same stupid mistake, time after time, but you cannot tell them anything: They know they are doing this job the correct way! Your observation sees the same mistake but you cannot do anything about it.

 

Making mistakes is an integral part of growing up. Parents cringe at the times their toddler has pulled out a bag of flour from the lower kitchen cupboard and spread it around the floor. Well, now this a moment to teach what you can and cannot touch! How much patience a parent must put forth!

 

At the other end of life, how often do we have a senior grandpa, who is convinced of his driving skills, come back from shopping trip with a dent or two on the back side of his vehicle? Maybe your driving skills are not working so well any longer??

 

It is the same with our spiritual lives. The strongest block to growing in our faith is to think that we are believers and that we are doing a pretty good job of living a good life. Nothing blocks God so much as people who are convinced of the strength of their religious convictions. 

 

You cannot come to God unless you are hungry. You cannot come to God unless you experience an absence in your life. This is why the woman or man who are struggling to live a sober life (i.e., free of drugs and alcohol) know in their bones that they need God just to get through today. They know their weakness, and the power of the addiction over their lives and they feel how much they need God just to get through this day, this week or this month. T\heir poverty makes them honest before God.

 

Our Christian religion is based on mistakes. Remember that Peter walked away from Jesus. He denied that he ever knew the man! The disciples argued over who was the best and most proficient of the disciples. They were playing the power game when Jesus upset their apple cart and instructed them to welcome the powerless (i.e., little children).

 

Here is where we must apply this to ourselves. We make mistakes. We fly off at the mouth sometimes and wish that we had never said what we said. 

 

But our mistakes must never become moments of denial but rather a time for us to examine ourselves and see where we need to grow and improve. We need to be the grandpa who gets out of the driver seat, examines the two dents in the back of his vehicle and considers  whether this is time to hand in his keys.

Jesus welcomes us back from our mistakes, our selfish sins and our negative attitudes. There is real opportunity to grow. 

 

Spend some time reflecting on the mistakes you have made in your life and the opportunities that God’s grace gave you to learn, to grow and to begin anew.

HOW IS JESUS A GIFT TO YOU?

is very healthy to make clear what our Christian religion actually means to us. It is a deliberate effort to evaluate if what we believe in the Creed actually has an impact on our daily lives.

 

Now, I must flip the question upside down: What would I lose if I did not believe in Jesus Christ? What if I barely had a touch of the Christian religion?

 

I am sure I would miss the core, the central energy of my life. I would not know who I was on the surface of this earth. This little exercise is pushing me to think clearly.

 

Jesus is God actually coming among us in all the weakness of human flesh. I believe in the great act of human redemption: the death and resurrection of Jesus. But I know that the divine mystery does not stop with Jesus: now, I must be transformed more and more into the likeness of Christ.

 

I feel a strong sense that the war-making between human beings is totally contrary to the very heart of God. We were never placed on this earth to run out and destroy each other as is happening right now in the troubled spots on the globe. God has put a restless and uncomfortable spirit within us to move away from aggression and work toward peace and justice between the tribes of humanity. The spirit of Jesus is an attitude and determination to work toward peace and justice within the human family. There are some days when I perceive this peace-building to be very weak, but God does not give up on human beings. 

 

Humanity has had three centuries of the industrial revelation. Human beings had conquered the land, the sea and outer space but now we are threatened by our own success. The earth is warming up. All forms of life are threatened. But there is a strong movement among Christians and so many others to work of preserve the earth. There is something so much deeper in this concern to save the earth. This is also the spirit of God, who has created all parts of the earth in love, moving us human beings to change our way of living and work to preserve the earth, the  water and the atmosphere. The spirit of God is moving in ways that we have not paid attention before: we are being tasked with survival of the human race and every living creature on this earth. 

 

When people get pushed aside, that is pushed to the margins, I sense the spirit of Jesus moving us to reach out to the poor and the neglected. The spirit of Jesus is not different but is moving us to see the very face of Jesus in the forgotten, the struggling and the poor with their many faces. 

 

If I did not have Jesus, the struglesnof my life would collapse. This exercise forces me to become more aware of what Jesus is and does in my life.

 

 

 

 

BE A PEACE-MAKER

 

This Sunday our second reading (from the Letter of James) offers us a stimulating image for the Christian life: ^“ And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace for those who cultivate peace” (James 3,18)

 

The people who walk with Jesus, seek to implement his vision and share with all they meet the very mercy of God will take the image of planting a garden of peace and use it in their spiritual reflections. An old image can generate new insights.

 

When you plant a garden in the springtime you are planning to get definite results in August and September. 

 

Plant the seeds of respect to all your fellow employees who are different from you in terms of race, gender, language and age. See in each person the very image of God. If the other with whom I work is of such great value by God’s creation, how can I not value them and rejoice in their existence? 

 

Sow the seeds of mercy over the mistakes that you have made in life and that others have made. Take each of their mistakes, hold the mistake in your hand and bless their failures with mercy. Your brother who is struggling with drug addiction, and had fallen off the wagon twice, needs the mercy of understanding. His decisions for sobriety may be very good, but the addiction can do a real job on his efforts. Mercy is lived in patience and understanding for the good will of your own brother.

 

You want to plant seeds that will break the violence and hard-heartedness that so often destroys our trust in one another. We pray to move into forgiveness and healing of the brokenness that  cripples our lives. May the seeds of forgivness produce the ointment of healing.

 

You need to plant the seeds of sincerity in all the words you  speak and all the decisions you make. Sincerity does not mean that we avoid the tough issues or avoid risking conflict and misunderstanding. Sincerity is always trying to do the right thing, even when it is very tough o accomplish. Sincerity means that we do not cut any corners in our relationships with others.

 

And then there is the constant weeding: pull out all selfishness, all excuse making and all the deep rooted weeds in our lives. Pull out all indifference to the pain and suffering of others. Weeding is hard work. 

 

Last of all, water frequently with water. When the soil is dry, nothing can grow and mature. Water is to your garden of peace-planting what love is to your Christiaan life. Water your peace garden often.

 

This may be a well-worn image, but it is very stimulating to place yourself as the gardener. What are you sowing in peace? What are you reaping from the peace you have planted?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IT IS A WALK WITH THE POOR

Take your Bible and work through the four gospels. Try to see if you ever hear Jesus praises the rich and the successful (by worldly standards)? Did he ever say: “What a grand house you have built to show your power and wealth?”

 

What does it mean that the Son of God does not value marvellous buildings and a strong showing of power over others?

 

Jesus, who is God’s revelation and God’s truth, begins with “blessed are the poor.” He reaches out to the people who get pushed aside: the peasants (considered dirty and illiterate), women, workers, prostitutes and the ordinary folk, like Peter and company (small business people with a fishing business). 

 

Every person counts! No one is excluded from the goodness and mercy of God. We humans may push the undesirables to the side, but the arms of God reaches out to embrace them. God is so unlike us humans who exclude or degrade others as not being worth as much on the status ladder.

 

To live the Christian life, to walk and pray with Jesus is to walk with the poor of this world. And the poor are always very close to us.

 

We have fellow believers who take time to visit, smile and care for the elderly with their various degrees of dementia. There are  very few words, but there is the gentle and warm taking of the elder’s hand and holding it in human kindness. That simple touching of hand to hand affirms the value and gift that this grandmother, who can only smile at you, possesses.

 

We have a ellow Christian who pick up the phone every week to call his sister in Calgary who has lost a thirty-year old son to a drug overdose. Sometimes you reflect on this mother’s pain, but most often, this is a simple call ‘to see how you are doing.’ It is a warm phone call of care. You want your sister to know that you care and you are walking with her in the painful winter of loss and emptiness.

 

And then you have your old high-school teacher. He has lost his wife three years ago and seems so lost. You pick him up, refuse to hear any excuses and fears that he is imposing on you, and you go to Tim Horton’s for coffee. There are lots of old stories about all the students he had in that chemistry class, but it is all about caring, laughing and just enjoying the surviving relationship from high school.

 

When our Christian faith is actually lived (and not going through the motions) it always leads us to reach out and walk with the poor. We must always think of the poor as the “poor with their many faces.” Poverty comes in many different flavours and colors.

 

Jesus never meant us to be comfortable and secure. He moves us to reach out the poor with the reminder that the poor are always near.

 

 

LISTEN TO YOUR ENEMIES

 

Who gave a word of wisdom to all politicians: “Listen to your enemies, because they are the only ones telling you the truth!”

 

We live in a time when people can be very shrill with each other: try to shout them down! We have become hardened and no longer shocked at some of the outrageous things people will say to one another in social media.

 

This is where we must learn from the mistakes that were made in the past. Many of our social breakdowns, our wars and our religious divisions have come because people refused to listen to one another.

 

In Western Christianity, five hundred years ago, we experienced the Reformation and the break-up of Christianity. This is where we must be very critical of our ancestors. They were Europeans with a long history of making wars with each other (i.e., not listening). When new ideas (i.e., challenges ) were brought forth, they could not hear the truth that the other was speaking. Christianity did not have to break apart. 

 

Simply put: no one was listening!

 

When people actually sit down and listen to one another new bridges are built; relationships are strengthened and we see each other in the new light. Listening is not only to overcome conflict but to strengthen a new future.

 

We are being challenged to listen in a new way to the pain and the suffering of the earth. Human activity is causing the atmosphere to warm up, to see rivers poisoned by chemicals dumped into its streams and the disappearacnce of species of  animals and birds. The earth calls out to listening to its pain.

 

Thousands of refugees are on the move to a safe country with stability and an economic opportunity. The world needs to listen to the thousands of displaced peoples; displaced by civil war and the breakdown of the society they are now trying to survive in. The movement of refugees is all about survival.

 

In our country, and every country, we need to listen to the countless people who are working two jobs and still cannot get established and become self-reliant. These are the working poor who most often are overlooked and marginalized. Are the media and the government listening to their struggles to survive?

 

Then there are the families and friends of Canadians who have died of a drug overdose. And what of all the health-care workers who are actively caring for people addicted to drugs?

 

The power of listening is to affirm the value of the other person, even if we firmly disagree with them. Listening will bring new insights and enable us to chart a new course of action within our society. It will always be challenging.

 

A  life built with honest listening is similar to the strengths we put into building our family home: it will last and thrive.