We Can Do This Hard Thing
by Lisa Prince, Founder of Gloria Dei
Beautiful friends, I think of you in these hard times of pandemic. Month after month and year after year we have marked the joys and the sorrows of life in community. We look for God together. We see God together. Now, here we are in the midst of this “hard thing” and we are not together physically.
This morning in prayer my heart ached under the weight of this absence.
I’m reminded in this time of just how much I take for granted – though I would never wish to.
I’m reminded of how much I learn from you.
I’m reminded of how much my journey in spiritual direction with you brings meaning to my life.
I’m reminded that we are created for meaning.
I’m reminded that in your own journey as in mine, how illusive our Lord can seem in certain times of our lives; Gods Hiddenness and Mystery being beyond searching out and reflective of a Love we cannot grasp.
“I see Him but not now; I behold Him but not near” (Num. 24:17)
This is a time of change, to be sure. And “all changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves. We must die to one life before we can enter another.” How God is shaping us; how any of us, or our society will look on the other side of this pandemic remains to be seen. But we can do this hard thing. Deep people do not just happen. Deep people are formed and forged in just such things as this.
We are not alone, for God is near. We are not alone for God has given us to one another and we carry one another in our hearts, even when the weight is heavy-going. We are not alone in our loneliness, even in our moments of fear and hopelessness, when it seems that only “others” are able to be noble and brave and do great deeds. “He also serves, who only stands and waits.” We wait, and we watch together for God, still. It is a “holy stance”; some would even say a calling.
As many of us now know personally someone(s) who have the Covid 19 virus, we pray together:
For all those whose bodies suffer this virus…
For all those whose bodies have succumbed to this virus… For those who desperately miss them…
For all those who look at their families and are filled with fear that they cannot provide what they need…
For single mothers, who came to this time already feeling they were at the limit of their strength…. For all those who feel “not enough.”
For the elderly who do not understand, or cannot even remember day to day why their loved ones don’t visit anymore, or stand on the other side of the glass….
For the lonely…
For the unloved…
For the tired…
For you and for me and the ways that the struggles of humanity are mirrored in us all…
Lord have Mercy…
Christ have Mercy on us all…
Teach us not to resist what appears as evil, for You have no enemies.
May we, like You, turn our cheek to the Pain, the Love, the Surrender and the Hope that we hear echoing in us in the silence of our souls… Be there, as we do this hard thing, together.
My love waits and watches with you and for you…
Lisa
By Carrie Newcomer, for you: https://youtu.be/PRGnftH_g4I