The past week has been very revealing. It reminded me of how busy I used to be. For the last three days I’ve been knee-deep in interviews for a new job. It went very well and I’m excited about the opportunity. But I could hardly keep up with the news regarding B16.
And this is most likely going to be emblematic of my life going forward. I will be absorbed by the necessity of engaging in a productive life leveraging the gifts that God has given me. But I will also have to doggedly keep my heart’s compass pointed towards Him so that I walk sure-footedly. Most of the planet has this same challenge. But how many pull it off?
I plan to. I’m committed to this duality and I sense that this new scenario is absolutely God’s will. We’ll see.
Driving home–six long hours–my thoughts ricocheted about like a ball in a squash game. It was a chance to let my brain maneuver between the multifaceted walls of what I believe to be a balanced existence–the human and the divine. Let me share a few random reflections.
*****
I’ve learned that Catholic faith is a gift from God, a pure package of divine relationship that can be eternal or momentary depending on the choices my free will makes. I’m aware that my intellect, another gift from God, is to be exercised in deepening my faith, and my level of religious knowledge, although growing, is light years removed from the scholars and thinkers who inspired me in my conversion. And here’s what I know instinctively. If my faith goes south or at least, vacations a bit too much, I should expect the road of life would be bumpier. Not so much that problems are multiplied but my handling of those problems is handicapped.
*****
The reality of my life has changed. I used to perceive my world in muddled ways. Not anymore. As a blind man, I was handed a spiritual lens hand-crafted by Jesus Christ. With confusion in retreat, lucidity is more of a constant companion.
*****
I’m free to pursue whatever I want. But an unborn child is innocent, vulnerable and dependent on his mother–completely and utterly–before he can exercise that sort of freedom. Yet in our day, the womb has become a precarious battlefield so abortion flourishes in this country like the poppy fields of Afghanistan. How is it that both mother and society are shamelessly willing to walk away from the victimized baby as if he or she were carrion on a highway? I just don’t get it. Killing is murder, murder is evil. Please understand, I’m only ascribing evil to the abortion act and not the actors but malevolence is surreptitiously setting the agenda and clouding the reality of the crime.
Only an abortion fanatic would dispute the following: ”By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception.” One does not abort a lump of tissue or a homogeneous biological mass. It is a human being that is thrown in the trash. One does not destroy a “potential human being but a human being with potential.” The pertinent distinction between the mother and her unwanted, unborn baby is that the mother has had time to grow and develop. The butchered infant amid the garbage was denied this time.
*****
This whole notion of surrendering to God is fascinating. When I let go of everything, I realize that I haven’t given up anything because nothing is mine. Everything about my life is a gift from God. For me to think I control or own any of it is silly. I wish more people understood this.
*****
I pray that I’m a great success in my next endeavor. I so desperately want to give back, to share the fruits of God’s abundance. Lord, hear my prayer.
