New Year Thoughts

“The light shines in the darkness…”

So we come to this day, the last day of the year 2011. We are now on the year ending. How do you see the end of your year? Maybe you have seen only what is the year ending in your place, village, town or city. Some of you who have televisions, you would see clearly that the year is still ending with dangerous movements and fear- terrorism, frightening crimes, natural disasters, volcano eruptions, flood, energy and economic crises. The year is ending with a lot of our brothers and sisters in great suffering. There is darkness in the world because of the sins of humanity.

But in Proverbs 14:26, it says: “In the fear of the Lord there is a strong confidence, and His children will have a place of refuge.” The Lord is the Help, the Shield and the Light. He is born, and now, we are going to start anew. We enter into a new life, a new beginning, leaving behind the sins of the past and to work out the future. In the parish, we always have the year ending meeting, an evaluation of the whole year and making Action Plans for the year to come. First of all, we have to be thankful to the Lord for the events in 2011, we will count our blessings again, reflect our sins and lapses, even the moments of trials. See the wonders the Lord has done in your life! When we acknowledge that greatness and trust in the Lord, then the light has shown in your life. He will become our refuge from the fears in this world. In Him, we find peace.

Today is the last day of 2011, and then it means we have to welcome a new one. In a few hours we will say goodbye 2011 and say hello to 2012. Was 2011 a year of promotion for you? Was it a year of abundance, fruitful, wedding, birth? Was 2011 a year of achievement for you? How did you succeed? For other people 2011 was a year of death, a year of losing job, of business bankruptcy, a year of accident, or broken relationship. It was a year of setback.

This is precisely the reason why God divided time into months and years, seasons and cycles, past, present and future. So that in the past, we can have a place to bury out mistakes, in the present, we can see the mark of our success, and in the future, we can see the place where we can peg our hopes and dreams and ambitions.

We are on the last hours of 2011, and as soon as 24:00 ends and 00:01 ticks the clock, a new year begins, a new hope in the Lord 2012. Today offer to the Lord your failures of the past and your hopes for the New Year. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. We offer to Him our dreams, goals and ambitions.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2012!

It Is The Lord!

I am on a retreat here at kachebere Seminary, sitting on the top of the hill, looking down the valley, reflecting the scene of Jesus’ manifestation to His disciples. They were in a boat, fishing for the night. Jesus called them. John recognized Jesus and shouted: It is the Lord! Peter, hearing on this, naked, wrapped his private parts and jumped down to meet the Lord.

I could imagine the joy. I could imagine the excitement in the part of Peter and the amazement of the rest of the apostles. As if they forgot that Jesus died, that Jesus showed Himself to them after His death. At that moment, for them, it didn’t matter. The Lord is there. It was pure joy and excitement!

Yet, in our time, it is difficult to come from the past, as the disciples did after Jesus’ death. Others mummify things for the loss of their loved ones, so that emotionally, psychologically or spiritually, they are imprisoned. Others, victims of sexual abuse or physical abuse, project the experience to others, seeing the personality and mannerism similar to the abuser. It has a domino effect, so that one relationship is broken and the rest of the relationships are affected, because they are completely wrapped or overpowered by the painful experiences of the past.

But I am seeing my personal experience in the spiritual side of coming out and be free and to shout “It is the Lord!” I will look at these expressions as Holy Excitement, as Spiritual Joy because of the encounter with the Holy. It is an encounter beyond the physical description. My spirit leapt, rejoiced and shouted, and I even jumped out even in my spiritual nakedness.

As I was reflecting the scene in silence and closed eyes, I was having that vision of my soul running after to meet the Lord, but with all my humility, recognizing my nakedness.

I remember three moments in my life, where I felt strong this presence. I was spiritually stripped but also spiritually uplifted. I was then working in the bank when I received the news that my priest brother had an accident, and that he was seriously affected, fifty/fifty chances of survival. I rushed home and ran straight to the hospital where my brother was. I saw him all bruised, like the color of an eggplant, losing blood, dying, and unconscious. My mother was there running and consoling. Looking at him deeply in silence, touched and pained, I told myself: “lord, heal him, and I will be yours!” I don’t know up to this time why I said those words, how and when, only God knows. I was helpless, my family was helpless, but I was clinging to the little faith I had, and I never gave up pestering the Lord for healing.

When I was in the seminary, my mother had another stroke which caused her completely paralyzed. I went home for holiday, only to find my mother dying and my father had a vehicular accident with broken clavicle. Two situations of pains. Seeing my mother so weak and my dad full of bandages, I was helpless again. I was spiritually stripped!

We started talking as a family to prepare whatever would come, even on funeral issues. They asked me if I still have to go back to the seminary, with the situation like this. Without any hesitations, I said “Yes”, without them knowing that it was the most painful ‘yes’ in my whole life. I just poured out my tears in silence as I was in my room.

I was spiritually naked, but I was clinging again to my little faith. When Jesus told his disciples to "Cast your nets into the deep", they were hesitant for the have been fishing the whole night and caught nothing. I had that little faith in me that even if I am not at home anymore, the Lord will take good care of everything, will breathe on my mother especially. I knew that leaving a sickly mother and father was too much for me to carry. They were my emotional luggages. It was so painful to depart.

“It is the Lord!” I reflected on it again and again this time. It means ‘spiritual nakedness’. ‘It means ‘hanging on’ on our little faith. It means ‘leap for joy’, as John the Baptist did inside the womb of Elizabeth during the visitation.

My soul is so little but my soul rejoices in God my Savior for the many little things that I have received in my whole life. I am rejoicing, happy, peaceful and a cheerful missionary because “It is the Lord!’ who makes me like this.

Jeremiah 20:7
You have seduced me Yahweh. You have overpowered me! You are the stronger!
Because of you my Lord, I am here. I will do your will as you wish.
For all these years, after 14 years, when I gave my “Yes”, the fire is still burning in my heart. I want to dedicate the whole of me, in spite of sickness or misunderstanding.