And Mary said – I am the Lord’s servant, may it happen to me according to your word – or “let it happen to me as you have said!” (LUKE 1:38)
Doing God’s will comes at a personal cost. Every time we say yes to God, we say “no” to something else. As St Ignatius reminds us – it is not about choosing between good and bad it is about choosing between good and Godly. But my prayer for you is that you will choose Godly even though it often is the harder of the two. Submission to God means dying to self. All too often we try to hold onto the familiar, the victories of the past, but sometimes we inadvertently hold onto the failures and the hurts.
Each Spring, farmers in South Africa, burn off some of their grazing lands, just after the first rains. This is done to get rid of the old dead leaves (called moribund leaves) and make way for the new growth.
Soon we will be entering Lent and we too will shed the moribund in our lives. We need to do this as individuals and as organization. There are things that have served their purpose and served us well but are not needed in the future, they got us here and must be let go of. “Unless a grain of seed falls to the ground and dies…..” (John 12:24).
I say this because we need to be opening up our lives to the world of opportunity that God gives us. We all have storms to step out on, flood waters to cross, mountains to climb. Let us do so with a confidence that God frees us from that which ensnares us and makes a new way for us in a wilderness.
Revelation 3:8 Jesus says that He holds an open door before us, I am praying that as we step through that open door that we will step into a life of obedience to God, service of God, submission to God and the blessings of God.
Be assured of my prayer as we journey from our past into our future. Form our failure into God’s glory, and from our hope into the Joy of Christ.
Rector.
