Spiritual Direction nyc

December 16, 2017

Advent Reflection: “This Foolish Plan of God”

Each week of Advent, I’ll be posting two reflections on a different name of Jesus as given in Isaiah 9:6. This week’s name is “Counselor.”

Guest writer: Abraham Aldama

For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The government will rest on his shoulders. And he will be called: Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. – Isaiah 9:6.

READ

1 Corinthians 1:18-31

The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction! But we who are being saved know it is the very power of God. As the Scriptures say,

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise
and discard the intelligence of the intelligent.”

So where does this leave the philosophers, the scholars, and the world’s brilliant debaters? God has made the wisdom of this world look foolish. Since God in his wisdom saw to it that the world would never know him through human wisdom, he has used our foolish preaching to save those who believe. It is foolish to the Jews, who ask for signs from heaven. And it is foolish to the Greeks, who seek human wisdom. So when we preach that Christ was crucified, the Jews are offended and the Gentiles say it’s all nonsense.

But to those called by God to salvation, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. This foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God’s weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength.

Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you. Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important. As a result, no one can ever boast in the presence of God.

God has united you with Christ Jesus. For our benefit God made him to be wisdom itself. Christ made us right with God; he made us pure and holy, and he freed us from sin. Therefore, as the Scriptures say, “If you want to boast, boast only about the Lord.”

REFLECT & PRAY

The message of the gospel makes no sense. Think about it! Jesus Christ, who is God himself, took human form so he could die in our stead to give us life and reestablish the communion He once had with us. In human terms that is absolute madness! Why would the Almighty God want a relationship with us mortals? Why would He want to be in communion with sinners?

It’s because He cannot help but love us. He cannot deny his essence. He is love (1 John 4:8). Why is love His essence? I do not know.

The message of the cross is not for those for whom everything has to make sense. It is not for those who think they have it all figured out and think that they are in control of their lives. It is not for those who trust in their own strength, social status, wealth, education, and connections more than they trust God. It is not for those who do not love Jesus in return.

Jesus came for the poor, the sick, and the lame to show that it is not our earthly belongings or status that matter. He came for those whose power, accomplishments, and money are garbage compared to their desire to know Jesus (Philippians 3:8). I am not saying that success, fame, and wealth are bad in and of themselves. Paul himself was pretty successful in human terms before his calling. However, when we truly want to have a deep, intimate relationship with Jesus because we love Him, our dependence on other things will diminish to the point where they stop mattering at all. We will have nothing left to boast about but about Jesus.

In your prayer time today, ask God to examine your heart and show you if you have been depending on and boasting about things that are not Him. Do you depend on your own job? Your connections? Your family? Maybe even your ministry? Do you boast about your accomplishments? About your own righteousness?

On the contrary, do you feel unworthy because of your sins and failures? Do not despair but rejoice. The Lord has come for you!

RESPOND

Ask Jesus to be your counselor, your guide through life. Ask, as the worship song* goes, that His voice may be louder and clearer than all the others. If you hear Him speaking (however this might come for you), answer with Samuel’s words, “Speak, for your servant is listening,” and follow His voice.

Ask Jesus to increase your dependence on Him. Ask Jesus to be your wisdom: your righteousness, your holiness, and your redemption.

Finally, be mindful of when you are tempted to boast about your belongings, your accomplishments, your skills, your righteousness, or anything other than Jesus. Ask Him to help you overcome those temptations when you feel that they are creeping up.

*Full Attention, Jeremy Riddle

March 1, 2017

When My Father Was Young

He sent lit firecrackers floating on small wooden rafts down the irrigation ditches running under the outhouses. He and his brother Soko would listen for the BANG that shook the termite-eaten boards almost to the ground, then laugh until their sides hurt as the red-faced victim, caught with his pants down, ran fuming back to the sugar cane fields. From the small, brown women in wide-brimmed hats, bent over their buckets, scrubbing rich rust-colored soil out of faded clothes, they stole heavy washboards and stunned the frogs, bloated with flies and heat, sunning themselves in the shallows. Then chopped their heads off and cooked them for dinner. The fields stretched out for miles against the green-ridged mountains and the humidity crawled down their skin like a languorous eel. The sun, captured by the hero Maui with a flaxen rope, twisted and glittered in its sky cage.

Copyright Carrie Myers, 2014. Originally published in “Sacred Spaces: Works in Progress,” June 21-July 25, 2014. The Walls-Ortiz Gallery and Center.

March 1, 2017

February, NYC

Two men on the bus threaten to kill each other

not now, but later, out of sight of cameras.

They scream across the people crammed

like whole chickens into cans, moist and stuffed,

shuffling and turning as far as they can from the fuss.

The student scrolling through slides for a test,

pregnant woman balancing her belly on working heels,

old man with a cane, sleepy child wilting for a seat –

all equals in discomfort, shining beacons

of the democracy that is public transportation.

A homeless man begs for twenty dollars for a coat,

takes what’s offered and strides off, head up,

whining thrown off like a cheap clothing drive suit.

The woman who gave a few dollars fears

she’s been duped but can’t say no

to a potential angel entertained unaware.

She stops

to wonder who this Sunday School guilt hurts most,

the person taken in, or this man she eyes

as moral litmus, parable-in-disguise.

Emergency shelters open up. Intake workers

leave for empty lots, church steps, benches,

rounding up those who might not last outside.

Even those who’ve “lost their privileges” –

stealing, went off meds, overstayed, too many fights –

invited back, just this once, for winter’s coldest night.

March 1, 2017

Amina Christi (Soul of Christ)

Which is truer? To say that God is love,

or that for God, love is too limited

a term, as if an ocean were content

to curl within the confines of a cup

or drown in dust while angels sheathe their swords

and weep dry tears. This desert’s night crawls out

scorched and scornful before me, while I mouth

from cracked and wasted bones, God, give me words

to form, to speak your person, my soul’s life,

in certainty, not shapeless shadows, flow.

If words, proof, self, must fail before I know,

Lord, on each of my dyings, shed your light.

Let, rain, breath – Spirit – permeate this air

Let language become thought, and thought, prayer.

March 1, 2017

For a Sky Ravished by Light

I remember sitting at my childhood table

eating my daily cereal, when the sky

opened up, its astonished edges

marked by the absent beams where our ceiling

once was. The kitchen’s frame

wobbled, its light-

weight walls no longer held fast by the roof, and the sunlight

spilled onto the table.

I looked up past the exposed frame

to what seemed my own square of sky

kneeling down through the lifted ceiling

to feather the edges

of my experience, till then edged

with careful walls, with even the light

kept in order and at bay. But I knew of stained glass ceilings,

jewels poured down on feasting tables

and soaring buttresses pointing somewhere north of sky.

To frame

a life implies containment; to frame

your words requires care. Both ways of hedging

your bets. If you ask the sky

how it feels to be ravished by light

it will say it isn’t able

to place a ceiling

on loving and being loved. And we have no calling

to hold apart our fragile frames

when we lie together on the table

making a meal of our kisses. Your hair is edged

with the last light

of the swooning sky

and as the dark diffuses down, the sky

tilts its sighs towards the vanishing ceiling.

How light

these bodies, how fast these frames

tip towards the edge

of time and table.

Let’s table time, the distance between ceiling

and sky, the frame

that marks the edge of light.