|
|
|
 |
Life Ways When Stress Overwhelms Us Yesterday I baptized the child of old friends. After the ceremony we went back to the family home. It was a beautiful day and there were nine or ten children under six playing in the back yard. After we'd been there about an hour, one of the young girls approached one of the adults and asked where her mother was. The adult began to question the child. "Are you hungry?" "No. Where's my Mother?" "Do you have to use the bathroom?" "No. Where's my Mother?" "Are you cold?" "No. Where is my Mother?" Just at that moment the girl's mother came out onto the porch and the girl ran to her and embraced her leg. She just wanted her mother. I glanced over at the pair after a few minutes and they were talking intently. Then a few minutes after that the girl ran back into the crowd of kids, ready to play again. She just wanted her mother. Maybe the running around and the moment to moment changes had piled up and she felt overwhelmed. She went to her mother because by nature and experience she knew her mother would console her. She went to her mother to have the chaos subdued, and to be reminded of who she was. How different our world would be if we in our distress turned first to God for consolation and direction. So much of the insanity and violence there is around us stems from people becoming overwhelmed, believing there is no place to turn. We can handle only so much. If only we could recognize our limits as a call to find God instead of defects to be ashamed of, we would have the freedom to seek the Lord with simple trust, in the way the girl sought her mother. An honest understanding of our need for God, and a humble admission of our weakness allows us to receive much needed consolation from the Divine. Only when we are able to be comforted in our distress about life can we return to life's demands refreshed, and with something to give. I saw that in the little girl with her mother. After a few minutes, the girl was ready to play, but without that break it wouldn't have happened. She would've melted down. The gift of the Holy Spirit celebrates the guarantee that every hopeful, trusting and limited heart will be received by the Father and restored by the Spirit of Christ. We are assured that we will be given what we need to be secure. This will steady us, and give us the freedom to enrich the world. Here is the miracle of the Holy Spirit: that God continues to be present to us. The Holy Spirit is not a force like electricity, it is a living presence, like Jesus was to His disciples. Fr, Raymond Brown, the great scripture scholar, wrote that "the Holy Spirit IS the personal presence of Jesus in the Christian." Can God get any closer? The nature of the Holy Spirit is to continue the incarnation of God into our world, now that Christ has returned to the Father. The Spirit works to make each of us a disciple of Christ. To comfort us, to refresh us, and to form us in the image of Christ, who manifested the Divine perfectly within human existence. This is a continuous gift. A bumper sticker I saw once summed it up by saying "Communion with God saves lives." Drawing us close is the purpose of the Holy Spirit. How do you and I open ourselves up to this gift? It cannot be given unless we are willing to be directed, and led. This can be frightening. The first step is to believe that God can in fact have an influence in our crowded and stressful lives. Some of us, while saying we believe, actually feel that God is not interested in us. We're too small, too ordinary. We doubt that God has the desire to transform us. We are sure that there will be no cures, no miracles, no removal of a stony heart, no giving of a natural heart. How sad, and how wrong. If the Church professes anything, it is that God desires to be welcomed into every human heart, even mine, even yours. Once we believe, we must make a daily space for the Holy Spirit of Christ. Our job is not to try to impress God with our abilities. Our job is to be honest with God about our inabilities. The problem with so many of our lives is that we pack them full of a thousand activities, pretending we should be able to handle them all, and we never let God in to help sort it out, level it off, bring order to the chaos and remind us of who we are. There can be no Pentecost for us until we do as the disciples did: pray, be quiet before the power of God and wait for the Lord to do what the Lord intends to do. He's the boss. God desires that the gift of the Spirit will unfold in each of our lives, and in our life together in the Church. When we are overflowing with the stress of life, and the chaos of being human is too much, we can explode with the frustration of it all, or we can turn to God for the renewal He offers. What God will give in the Holy Spirit is a release from the bondage of having to do it all. Then God will begin the transforming work which will turn us into people who trust Him more and more, force ourselves on life less and less, and begin to resemble little Christs. Jesus enters our lives. He becomes brother, teacher, companion, inspiration, and finally, God. This state of dependent bliss is called living in the Spirit. It is how we were meant to live.
Copyright © 1999-2003, Daughters of St. Paul. All Rights Reserved.
|
