Posted on by Charly

“Here I am Lord; I Come to do Your Will”

As I tried to sing these words at Mass all I could focus on was not coughing. I have had a dreadful cough for over a week that has kept both my husband and I from having a good nights sleep. To soothe my aching throat and so I didn’t interrupt the beautiful children’s choir with my ugly coughing I stoped signing and merely read the words:

“Here I am Lord; I come to do your will.”

Yes here I am Lord. In your church. With your people. I am here obediently and lovingly worshiping you. I am here because you allowed me to be and you put me into existence. As if that isn’t profound enough I am suddenly struck by the promise I am making in next line:

“…. I come to do your will”

Your will. I am telling God I come to do your will, but so often I do my own will. How do I know the difference?

When discerning His will and making decisions about what to do next we must always keep the end in mind. By this I mean our death in this world and our ultimate meeting with Jesus. When Jesus guides our choices and our actions then we are doing His will. When meeting Jesus is our goal we can’t help but try and try again to follow His commands. In doing so we are trying and trying again to do His will.

Next time I read psalm 40 (I pray that I can sing it without a fit of coughing) I will be reminded that I am promising God that not only am I here because of His grace but I am promising to do His will.

Posted on by Charly

I Want it My Way

light switch

I can deny it but my humanity tends toward the motto; I want it my way.  It’s not easy to do life God’s way. I fail at it multiple times everyday but I continue to start again with Him as my guide. As much as I want my way to be right, without knowing and following Him it can’t be.

We are in a culture where it is “right” to let everyone make up their own rules. Whatever makes them happy they believe is right and they believe they have the right to do it.  As a parent, a friend, a Christian I don’t encourage people to do whatever makes them happy without first having the guidance of God.  God desires their happiness, and so do I,  but there are things that seem to make us happy and will actually bring us harm. We naturally tend to do what we believe will make us happy but without any guiding force that is all knowing we can’t even know what true happiness is.

I have to admit I am not a fan of the darkness of  being unhappy.  It is painful to suffer loss, hurt, illness or any other difficulties. Even just darkness itself is scary. Apparently my littlest one feels the same way. She will run excitedly down to her room but if the light is off she runs back with big eyes yelling “scary!”

She’s right. The dark is scary. You can’t see what is right in front of you. You can’t see if there is danger or wonderful surprises. The solution however is simple; turn on the light.  She may be too short to reach the switch but there is always someone around willing to help her.  I am thankful that everyone in her life at the moment wants to turn the light on and not mislead her into the darkness.  The powers the be in our world seem to want us to walk in the darkness, to make our own happiness by way of enjoying all of the pleasures of life without consequence.  There are consequences to doing things our own way.  The most significant of which is that we will not find true happiness in the eternal life.

Christians have the solution to this worlds darkness. Just as we turn on the light in a dark room we need to turn to God who is light.  The song “Turn to the Living God” comes to mind. It starts out with the title: “Turn, turn to the living God.”  The song continues with, “The God of mercy and justice..” And then it finishes up the chorus with, “and with delight he will turn to you, with delight he will turn to you.”

If we turn to Him not only will He turn to us but with DELIGHT He will turn to us!

He shines so bright that when He turns to us He will light us up with His love no matter the darkness that resides in us or around us. With that light we can then see what will lead us to happiness, we can shine a path for others, we can turn darkness into light, and we can see that what we truly desire is to let Him lead the way.