From The Pastor: 1-10-2016

We are more than a week into the new year and most likely back to the daily grind. Work, making meals, going to school, nursing a cold: the excitement of the holidays are over and the ordinariness of life begins once again. But that is a good thing! In many ways, it is in the ordinary times of our life that God is working. Being faithful to the people in our lives, doing the things we need to do to make this a better world, raising our kids to be good Christians is done without fanfare, without a whole lot of appreciation, and probably not with much sleep, but it is in these simple, ordinary times of life that we are slowly, but surely, becoming what God created us to be. If we try to determine growth in our spiritual lives, it is hard to do so looking at a day or week or even a month at a time. We have no perspective.

Rather, we must look back over the years and see, only in hindsight, that God truly has been working in our lives, transforming us into His creations. Ask yourself the question: have I changed over the past ten years? AmI more patient, less angry, more forgiving, kinder? If you can answer “yes” to those questions, then you have responded to the grace God is showering you with in your life. If the answer is “no”, there is always a new day to open yourself to the grace of God in your life. Jesus uses the parable of the seed in the ground to speak about the spiritual life. It takes a long time for that seed to bear fruit. The same is true in our lives. Let God nourish you each day with his grace, love and mercy and you will look back on your life and realize how much God was always there!

Father Al