Long time no post!
Spiritual darkness has been something on my mind recently, over the past few weeks, in terms of its meaning and implications. Many of us have experienced those days where we're just not feeling up to par - we can't focus, or are having trouble doing God's Work, or are having difficulty figuring out what that Work is. BUT, just when we are at our lowest, and have hit rock bottom thinking that we're unable to achieve ANYTHING, God comes in and saves the day (as He ALWAYS does!). :)
While God always walks beside us, and we should always know this and have Faith in His presence, there are times where we cannot FEEL His presence. And those times can be and are very difficult to deal with.
I obviously have a story to go along with this, because everything in this blog comes from a real-life story, so here goes. :)
Today started off okay, and progessed into the realm of uncertainty. Doubts and anxiety were plaguing my mind - doubts regarding what I should do today, how I could best carry out God's Will today, anxieties about why I was loving others in the way that I was today, or why I didn't feel I was loving adequately enough. Yet, an incident this evening, while small, was a quick snap back to the reality of God's love - and I would have missed it very easily had I not been paying attention!
As I was reaching into the bathroom closet to get something, I knocked over a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and the cap flew off and peroxide came spilling out onto the bathroom floor. Then it HIT me - even when we doubt, even when we make mistakes, even when we are blind and deaf and mute, even when we get lost and don't know where to ask for directions, all we need to remember is that Jesus DIED - he DESCENDED to the dead, and AROSE from death three later - so that He could provide us with the life-giving, healing waters born of His passionate and ardent love of us.
The contents of that dark bottle of peroxide can't be exposed to sunlight, or else the contents lose their healing power! What an analogy! Christ's love is not always manifested in BIG ways - in fact, quite the contrary! God takes pleasure in the small, in the humble - He appeared to Moses as a burning bush, not as a huge mountain, or a giant sea. We cannot during our earthly lives experience the fullness of God's love, because we can never truly comprehend it. It must remain a mystery inside that dark little bottle, or else it loses its healing power!
Back to our story, though. As I cleaned up the peroxide on the floor, I noted how it sank into some of the cuts and cracks along the sides of my fingernails, and it hurt a bit. But, I knew that the peroxide hurt because it was removing bacteria and such from the open cuts by my fingernails, clearing them of the possibility of infection, and I trusted in the effectiveness of that peroxide. So, in the end, what resulted was a pain that gave way to healing, a healing that gave way to a lessening of anxiety about infection. How confident we are in something small like peroxide, yet how hard it is to trust in the ultimate and transformative healing power of Jesus Christ, who is infinitely more powerful than that small bottle!!!
Ultimately, God will ALWAYS love us, and we cannot do anything to either deserve nor remove that love. The tricky part is remembering to trust that His love and mercy follow us every day of our lives! Do we think that the sun will never come out again on a rainy day? Do we trust that our world will still receive the same warmth even though we can't feel sun on our skin? When the sun goes behind the moon, does it cease to exist? NO!
Sometimes, all we need is little cues of God's love. An encounter with an old friend we haven't seen in a while. An unexpected whiff of roses coming from an inner-city garden (or from anywhere for that matter!). A smile exchanged with a stranger for no reason other than the fact that God's love is present in everyone and everything, in every way. There is a deep-seated need for God's love that is built into our systems in such a way that we cannot ignore it, yet we manage to do so.
Today, I got to witness the beautiful trust of a little boy jumping off the side of a pool into his dad's arms. He saw his dad in the pool, squealed a little kid squeal of delight, and jumped (after a running start, nonetheless!) straight into his dad's arms. I was equally fascinated and in love with this scene at the time, and it's only now that I am truly overjoyed by it!! Sometimes, he would pause at the end of the wooden platform above the pool, and try to stick his toe in, to see if his father would come over and pick him up to gently place him in the pool. But his dad kept insisting that he run and jump, so he did. And EVERY TIME, he caught him. :) Sometimes his head went a little down into the water, sometimes he came up sputtering a bit, but he smiled and smiled and kept wanting to dive right back in.
Toward the end of his pool escapades, this little boy jumped into his father's arms and didn't smile. His face remained even, and this struck me - this little boy is supposed to be happy - look, his dad caught him, he's being safely carried back, what's wrong? Maybe the water was too cold, maybe he decided he wasn't going to have fun anymore, maybe he had had enough of this whole "trust" thing. But regardless of this momentary blip of expressionlessness, he reverted right back to his happy jumping into the pool.
That we all might jump so trustingly and lovingly into the arms of our Heavenly Father, that He can heal us in the waters that spring forth from His only Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ!!! He'll dunk us in that pool every time, catch us every time, not allow us to just stick a toe in, but rather insist that we JUMP and submerge ourselves every time, because we don't know how to swim, and He wants us to receive as much of His love as we can!! He will support us and keep us every time!!!
Let us pray to trust in God with our whole hearts through the intercession of Mary, to have faith that will move mountains and encourage us to make that leap into God's arms, to receive well the instruction ("jump into my arms!") and understanding gifted to us by the Holy Spirit through Mary!!! :)
Caritas Christi,
Christina :)
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