Saturday, March 21, 2020

God in All This


I resolved to self-quarantine over a week ago, as I wrote here.  Yet today I broke that resolve.  I called a woman I know, who was celebrating her 84th birthday today, only to hear she was celebrating it alone.  I know this woman; this woman is a wonderful person God put in my life.  Without hesitation I tossed aside my resolve and said: “Well, I’m coming over for dinner.  What can I make?”  And I proceeded to make her favorite dish; I had all the ingredients.  After dinner at her house, she wanted to show me pictures and play games; it was impossible to keep any distance, and thoughts about contagion flicked in the back of my mind.  When I finally left, I came home and cleaned thoroughly, changing clothes.  And I went to the adoration chapel to say my night prayers --- the one thing I resolved to still do, despite my quarantine.  Yet, for the first time I can ever recall, at this late hour, someone else was there in the small chapel.  So, I went home, to pray my night prayers alone in my home, not His.  It’s been many years since I didn’t end my night in His house, but as I prayed, I felt Him telling me that I WAS in His house, when I visited that woman.
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Earlier this afternoon, as I was preparing the carry-out dinner at my house, a friend called.  She and I had worked to develop the PORCH program --- Providing Others Renewed Confidence and Hope --- in our community.  A couple of years back God put a woman in need in my path and said “You need to help her,” and that was the beginning of a journey which led to PORCH, which matches lonely people in our community with neighbors who want to love them.  The program is only a couple of months old, but is running extremely well, although we are making adjustments as we learn new things, with the intent to roll all the details out to other communities by the end of the year ---- or, that was our plan.  My friend called to tell me that she had been in on a state-wide video conference call, to discuss steps which might be taken to reach the elderly who might be at risk of the Corona virus, to determine if they were well, and had any needs.  The conference encouraged text comments and questions to the presentation, and my friend texted what we had begun in our community with PORCH.  And she told me that as a result, we won’t be waiting until the end of the year to roll out our program; the response to her text was immediate from many other communities:  What are you doing?  How did you set it up?  Can we get details so we can do the same to reach our seniors? 
It’s funny how God works, isn’t it?  He told me “You need to help her,” and we began something two years ago which rolled on way beyond our plans, or control.  It’s always obvious to my friend and I Who is in control of this program.  And we give Him thanks.  What we began two years ago was planning for what is happening now.  If we had known God’s plan for this, we certainly would have gone about things differently, and likely screwed them up.  As it is, He’s in control.  No problem.
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And another place where God is, is in our prayers.  He speaks to us.  Tonight, as I prayed my night prayers at home, I heard Him speaking clearly, as I read some of the meditations:
“There is no difficulty in our lives for which God does not know the solution.  From all eternity He has foreseen it and has the remedy for each case, no matter how complicated the situation may be.  However, sometimes in difficult circumstances He seems to leave us alone as if the outcome were to depend on us, but He does this only to test us.  He wants us to measure our strength against the difficulty --- which makes us more aware of our weakness and insufficiency --- and He wants us also to exercise our faith and our confidence in Him.  The Lord never really abandons us unless we forsake Him first.  He only hides Himself and covers His actions with a dark veil.  This is the time to believe, to believe firmly, and to wait with humble patience and complete confidence.”
--- Divine Intimacy, Meditation 119

“Christ:  If only you could understand how brief this earthly life is!  Time is so short.  Eternity is always at your side.  Everything that happens to you now, every opportunity I send you, every invitation I give you, is a chance for you to expand the capacity of your soul to love by exercising self-forgetfulness and self-giving.  And the more you expand that capacity, the more I will be able to fill you with the light of my glory when you come home to my Father’s house.  Think more about this.  Work for my kingdom as if you had little time left to do so, because the truth is that you do have little time left, so little time!”
                                               
                                                --- The Better Part, Meditation 268

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