January 15, 2015

 

WAITING ON PROMISES

 
Waiting….
 
Much of life is waiting – on lines – for children – for supper – for love – for sleep – for the dawn.
 
Promises.
 
In order to be able to wait, to have the patience to wait, I need to have heard a promise or to believe in a promise.
 
Otherwise we wouldn’t get on the line.  We wouldn’t wait in the rain in hopes of getting the ticket.
 
Promises.
 
We wait for a loved one to return.
 
The father waited for the Prodigal Son to return – and he did return – to home, reconnection, family, the Kingdom underneath it all – even though he was bleeding, cut, hurt, needy,  humbled, less.
 
Resurrection.
 
We know there is resurrection - based on a promise by Jesus.
 
We know Jesus would return - based on a promise.
 
We know Jesus  is present – based on a promise.
 
Promises….
 
Waiting for the sun to rise – after a long night – after years of sin – after years of darkness – after years of refusing to wait.
 
Here I am Lord – standing on line – hoping to get home  - waiting for love, to feel the embrace of arms, hungry for the fatted calf, a washing, the garment, bread, wine, understanding, love.
 
Thank God, the line is so long. Thank God, the traffic is so heavy.  It means I’m not the only one. There are all these other people heading home – who are relying on a promise.
 
Waiting …. Learning how to wait – that’s a life learning.
 
So I guess that’s why the scriptures, that’s why the Gospels, are pointing out why all these people are waiting with the promise of the Bridegroom, the Messiah, to come.
 

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2022

January  15,  2022

 

 

 

Thought for Today

 

 

“Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.”

 

 

H. L. Mencken

Prejudices

January  14,  2022 

A PERSONAL  RELIGION

 
I begin life with no say in the matter – a seed and an egg – planted in my mother’s womb.
 
It’s as simple as that.
 
I end life with little say in the matter – dust and bone – planted in the under-ground – in mother earth – in a tomb.
 
And in between those two moments – birth and death – I can become conscious. 
 
About: life.  About:  the gift of life.   Why me?
 
And I spend my life figuring -  chasing – and doing more figuring – about family, work, religion, relationships, commuting, weekends, sports, reading, education, exercise, etc., etc., etc.
 
Life.
 
Love.  The different people I have met.  Relationships…. Discoveries …. People I like…. People who have taught me so much…. People who are fascinating, different, interesting ….
 
Life. Love. Light.
 
I search for meaning – to become enlightened.  I look into religions for deeper understandings – turning corners – a second, third, and  fourth looks -  and many times – where I have been before seems  so, so different – than before  - the older I get.
 
Christianity …. Judaism …. Muslim …. Buddhism …. Hinduism …. Atheism ….
 
Ideas …. Nuances …. Challenges ….
 
I spend time thinking that religion is ideas, systems, theology, teaching, organization.
 
Jesus.
 
I discover Jesus as a person – not just a word or words in a Bible – but as word made flesh – dwelling among us – a person – a presence to wrap my life around.
 
“Religion” – as someone described it: “It’s what you wrap your life around.”
 
Jesus: Life….  Light….  Love,,,.
 
Jesus: the one who promises to be there after I become dust and disappearance – distance – when I am on  the other side of the tomb.

 

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2022ection

January  14,  2022

 

Thought for Today

 

“Fiction reveals truths that realty obscures.”

 

Jessamyn West

 January 13,  2022

ANCHORS  AWAY

 

The anchor is a symbol of hope – hope that our ships will  reach shore – hope that we’ll get to our harbor.

 

Faith is the call to pull up anchor and launch out into the deep.

 

Faith is the call to leave all – lift our anchor – and our nets – and to  set sail with the carpenter.

 

Faith is a journey  - a voyage – to the other side – to what we can’t see – into the unknown – sailing through the eye of the needle – into the great unknown.

 

Then in the middle of trip – in the middle of a storm – Jesus is sleeping through it all.  Jesus is sleeping while we are afraid and awake. What about his promise to be with us all days – even to the end of the world?

 

Anchors away.

 

The history of the world for many is a history of migration and movement, pulling stakes and anchors – and seeing sail for newer shores.

 

Taking a risk – trying something new – entering a new field – that’s the stuff of adventure – discovery.

 

Leaving home for college – for the military – for a new job – in a far country – can be a scary question.

 

Death is the ultimate voyage.  We take nothing with us. We swim naked into the great unknown – plunged into the dark waters  - tossed by the great waves – surrounded by all those others who also died that day.

 

Faith is the only anchor.  Faith is our hope. Jesus went before us and in these days – this Jonah arrived on the shore of eternity – the Risen One – still with us all days.

  

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2022

January  13,  2022

 

Thought for Today

 

“We are not bitter, not because we have forgiven but because there is so much to be done that we cannot afford to waste valuable time and resources on anger.”

 

Govan Mbeki

[Johannesburg Weekly

South Africa]

 

 January 12,  2022

PRAYER  AND  ILLUSION

 

 

Spending time in prayer can be a great illusion.

 

People who pray or people who don’t pray, as well as people who make inward fun of people who pray,  can  be involved with a great illusion.

 

People who pray have a unique opportunity to be in  touch with this illusion.

 

People can do that.  Better time with God can do that.  Better becoming  quiet, becoming still, becoming empty, becoming closer to God, can help me see who I am in comparison to God.

 

People who become close to God can say some strange and nasty things about themselves when this happens,  One reads words like “worm” or  “nothing” or “lowest of the low,” or “l am the greatest sinner”, etc.

 

A pebble looking at a mountain feels small. A drop of water falling into the ocean gets lost. A great violinist is not noticed.  It’s the music – the opening of one’s ears and eyes and hearts – becoming lost in the river of the music – as it flows – and we are all becoming one.

 

It's the same as being in the desert.  One can experience illusion … or maya or feelings that one is lost.

 

On a mountain, in the ocean, in the desert, one can become face to face with God.  One can also  become face to face with the devil. The fight is on.

 

Temptations are illusions – illusions to greatness and to grandeur -  to see rocks as bread or the ability to leap to greatness without any effort. The temptations Jesus was hit  with in the desert can hit us as well.

 

The desert tells us all. It’s death without  water.  Nothing grows.  Sand can become the stuff of silicone chips – but that takes work – work – and the cooperation of thousands. Sand can become soil for food – lots of food if we are willing to work and cooperate with nature.

 

Pausing to pray – to get away from it all, to be in the presence of God - can still turn us some of these things to reality – but beware: illusions can remain illusions – and we don’t even know it.

 

 

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2022

January 12, 2022 

Thought for Today

 JUST AS I SUSPECTED

 
In a vision I heard this clearly whispered:
 
Study those who sing the most, but are free
of criticism or praise.
 
Following that advice, things turned out
just as I suspected:
 
I  started spending more time with birds.
 

Hafiz

A Year With Hafiz,

Page 115,

translateld by Davide Ladinsky

A  FATHER’S   PRAYER

A father wonders about his kids. 
 
Different: at times he often worries.
 
“Am I treating this one fair?”  “Am I treating this one too easy?”
 
He doesn’t tell anyone about these worries. Well once and a while,  he mentions it to his wife or a friend at work.
 
Television stories of other people’s kids – or what happens to the son or one or the guys at work trigger these thoughts – or sometimes it’s just a boring basketball game or a hated meeting – and off he goes with his wondering and his worrying.
 
These become his prayers – the down deep prayers – that he doesn’t even know he’s praying about.
 
And they slip out without his even knowing it in his behaviors – a surprise trip for a hamburger with his kid – or a $20 dollar bill slipped quietly into a shirt pocket when his kid is going on a school outing – a man’s way of saying, “I love you.”
 
Then the teenage years appear. Both he and the kids are older and different. Distancing is happening.
 
It’s all part of the package of being human.
 
The worries and the wonderings become more scary: drugs, sex, car accidents, the wrong crowd….
 
The possibilities of a new way of doing life pops to the surface.
 
Fathers begin saying things to their wives they never said before.  Conversations and listening become longer.
 
Fathers begin to say prayers to God they never heard themselves saying before.
 
And sometimes teenagers see their parents holding each other – going for walks or a hamburger – saying a prayer together.
 
Each is beginning to get a greater awareness of what God has gifted them with: family, faith, future, questions, more wonders and more worries.
 

 

                                                                                         © Andy Costello, Reflections 2022 

January  11,  2022

 

Thought for Today

 

“The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him, ‘What are you going through?'”

 

Simone Weil,

Waiting for God

 January 10,  2022

EXPANSION AND CONTRACTION

 

The urge to pray and the urge to sin both seem to be ways of expanding ourselves – to become greater, better, bigger, more than we feel we are.

 

When I feel small, when I feel all alone, when I feel empty, I feel less.

 

It’s then I want to feel bigger, better, richer, fuller, more than I am.

 

So I better reach out for God in prayer – who then sends me – to love my neighbor.

 

Or I do the opposite: I try to put down my neighbor, so I can use him or her as a pedestal.

 

Or I use my neighbor – or cheat my neighbor – or steal from my neighbor.

 

Paradoxically, when I pray or when I sin, I contract. I shrink. I become smaller.

 

This religious stuff is always tricky like this.

 

When I commit a real good – or should I say – real bad – sin, I end up humbled, rejected, cut down, and reduced.

 

When I reach out for God, I meet greatness - but  end up feeling small – empty in God’s presence.

 

But I also can now fit through the eye of the needle.

 

I can now become filled up on the other side with the riches of the kingdom.

 

Jesus taught all this.

 

Jesus is God – and emptied himself – when he became one of us and emptied himself even more by becoming our servant. [Cf. Philippians 2: 5b-11]

He was put down, contradicted, crucified, for what he was telling us to do – to do the same thing – but now Christ fills the universe. 

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2022

January  10,  2022

 

 Thought for Today

 

 

“The worst prison would be a closed heart.”

 

Pope John Paul  II

 January 9, 2022

BILLIONS TO ONE

 

 

When we listen to the Scriptures, when we hear the words,  when we notice the things that happen in the stories, we see people who know God, people who claim God, as their own, personally

 

So we have the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, the God of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezechiel, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

Each individual mentioned seems to know, love and serve God individually, personally.

 

Billions of people did this and are doing this – these one to – connecting to God by name relationships.

 

Only God can pull this off.

 

I say this, because when I am with a group, so often I miss so many individuals, because there all these eyes  all around me – all these different personalities – people pumping their egos up – like so many hot air balloons filling the sky.

 

But it seems that God can take us one at a time – to be with each of us – one at a time.

 

I guess a new type of relationship erupts the moment I begin to pair off with God – like a teenager, boy or girl, moving away from the crowd, to begin a possible one to one relationship, with each other – by name.

 

Next can come grown up prayer – a grown up relationship, God and me. Me and God.

 

So the God of Andrew now arrives.  It was there all along as far as God is concerned – but for me, no, not until now.

 

So God, here I am, as I am. Here is your servant.  I’m here to listen to you.

 

I’m here to hear the unique reason You made me – in the unique setting you put me in

 

Here I am, Lord.

 

Here I am, this I am that I am.

 

 

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2022

January  9,  2022

 

Thought for Today

 

“The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.”

 

Marcus Aurelius