Waiting for God

Waiting for God

 “O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,

My eyes are not raised too high;

I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvellous for me.

But, I have calmed and quieted my soul,

Like a weaned child with its mother;

My soul is like the weaned child that is with me.” Psalm 131

I come to early church with all the  concerns of the day and the  present week and the past week. I am not playing the harp because I am having difficulty putting in new strings for two that have recently broken. It is the first meeting for discernment for the Daughters of the King at St. Mark’s. We have a wellness forum during the adult formation hour that I have been working on.  There are some pages missing in the Eucharistic Prayer for the next service in the Altar Book.  I decide to go and sit at the back of the church and try to quiet the busyness about these concerns and more. The church is absolutely quiet.  The long green season hangings are more calming and  simplistic with a hint of the ornamental. The candles are lighted and flickering. The summer flowers are in honor of the mother of a friend.

 I am in a beautiful place built to bring us closer to God, but my head is still a mess. How can I see or taste a glimpse of the holy before the service starts? Must I wait for some moment during the liturgy, at the scripture, in the prayers, the sermon, the music, the Eucharist? I pray for guidance, actually for help. The message comes. Start intercessory prayers. You have not said your private prayers  this morning before church. Too busy. I start praying for those I am committed to pray for each day. If I know them, I imagine them with Jesus. Almost immediately, I feel that peace that passes understanding, a calm.

Time after time this is my experience. I begin to know a peace whenever I can get out of myself and my world and my concerns and send love to my neighbor by visiting, calling, writing, serving or a multitude of other ways, but especially in intercessory prayer.  I rarely know how these prayers affect those I pray for, but with each prayer, my mind and my body also take me to find Jesus as I try to connect others to that healing love.

Joanna joannaseibert.com  

Kayla Mueller: God in suffering

Kayla Mueller: God in suffering

“I will always seek God. Some people find God in church. Some people find God in nature. Some people find God in love; I find God in suffering. I've known for some time what my life's work is, using my hands as tools to relieve suffering. “Kayla Mueller (1988­–2015). Synthesis, Today Quote June 28, 2018 synthesispub.com

Kayla Mueller was a twenty-six-year-old Christian human rights activist and aid worker from Arizona who was taken captive by ISSIS in 2013 in Aleppo, Syria, after leaving a Doctors Without Borders Hospitals. Kayla had been involved in this country with Food not Bombs, in India with Tibetan refugees, in Israel with African refugees, and in Turkey assisting Syrian refugees. She died in captivity in 2015 after being a hostage for 18 months and subjected by all reports to torture and sexual abuse.

Many have called her “the best of America” and the “best of the millennials.” Those who escaped who knew her in captivity when she was subjected to great suffering would agree. She certainly should be considered a present-day martyr, even trying to relieve the suffering of others who were imprisoned with her. She refused to escape with another young Yazidi girls, telling her, “No, because I am American. If I escape with you, they will do everything to find us again.”

God promises to be with us in suffering. We see many who suffer who seem to sense God’s presence with them while others talk of being estranged or abandoned by God. Our world so desperately needs more people like Kayla who have the gift of seeing God in suffering. I think we can do this by showing God’s love more in  actions than words as we care for and let those who suffer know they are loved. In time, those who suffer and feel they have lost God may see God in this neighbor. Then in time they may even see God in themselves again, the God within them. This indeed is our ministry as spiritual friends to each other.

Some of us may not have the overpowering courage and selfless gift of empathy of Kayla, but  there are so many ways to let others who are suffering know they are loved. We can sit and listen. We can help with daily tasks that their suffering keeps them from doing. We can visit. We can call. We can volunteer. We can hug. We can read to them. We can feed the hungry. We can be aware of and  reach out to and support those who are sick, lonely, poor, weak, homeless. So much more.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Hillesum: Answers

Hillesum: Answers

“Thinking gets you nowhere. It may be a fine and noble aid in academic studies, but you can’t think your way out of emotional difficulties. That takes something altogether different. You have to make yourself passive then, and just listen. Re-establish contact with a slice of eternity.” Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life, Daily Quote, June 29, 2018, Inwardoutward.org, Church of the Saviour.

Hans Peter Gauster

Etty Hilesum gives us her formula for finding her way through difficult situations.  Those who make decision using their thinking (T) function, what is reasonable, will probably disagree. Those who make decisions using their feeling (F) function, taking in consideration the importance of relationships may probably agree with Ms. Hilesum. Looking deeper beyond personality types takes us to another level. I think she is trying to tell us to let the committee in our head rest by whatever means we use, reading,  meditation, music, walking, praying, writing, just being. She is telling us to connect to the God within us however we can. We are to try to find an answer from something greater than ourselves. We do not know the exact answer. We will recognize it because we know it will have something to do with love.

Joanna  joannaseibert.com