Deeper

It is getting deeper and deeper in this Retreat in Daily Life that I'm doing (aka Spiritual Exercises). Last week we started on sin, this week we're into personal sin and I think next week we might be in sin again. So, while I'm going through Thanksgiving and wanting to be thankful for all the people and blessings in my life, there is this sin thing that's hanging over my head and it's bringing me down. Maybe not down as much as retrospective. I'm beginning to think that we might need to be looking back over our lives more than we do. Not to remember what we did that was so awesome or how bad we were treated, but too see how God has been there all along.


I have been looking back over my life and considering my history in terms of blessings. My family background, childhood, school years, work years up to the present. To see my life through God's eye's. I've had a blessed life. I then needed to look for elements of transcendence in my life story: compassion and insight flowing out of sin and disorder; isolation and loneliness leading to healing, forgiveness, belonging and freedom; humility in times of success; courage in times of failure. Wow!


The thing that keeps coming to me is that God has always been there! When I turned my back on His love and ran as hard as I could in the opposite direction, He was still there. He has waited on me to come to myself so many times! He is the father in the parodical son story, waiting on me and watching for me. This fills me with such a tenderness and gratefulness that I find I'm at a loss for words.


Then I have to pay special attention to the sinful (dark) moments of my life. How often do we do this? I am coming to an awareness of God's mercy and love that's been extended to me in the midst of my sins. He helps us see the disorder in our lives so that we may become the instruments of that love. So that we have the empathy and compassion to be Jesus to others. If you have lived through your sin and been healed, you too can heal. This is something that God is showing me more and more everyday. He brings people to me that need that healing, that He has shown to me. This is what it means to be the hands and feet of Jesus. 


We have to look at our sin in the face and call it what it is. We turned from God's love, we made the choice, which He gives us, and we didn't choose Him. That's sin coming first in our life, not God. 


Who will rescue me from this body doomed to death. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! ~Romans 7:24