4th Advent - Hopes and Dreams!

To be Human is to dream and have dreams.   
God created us. God too has dreams for all of creation, therefore, we created in God’s own image, we   dream.  
We dream. We plan. We imagine. We hope.

We dream of our loves in life. We hope for the perfect job.  We make plans for our vacations.  We hope for our children and their future.  We desire a wonderful life.

What happens when our plans, our dreams, our hopes go awry?  What happens when we become disappointed or devastated.

One young married couple hoped for a baby. So they tried. It happened. They were soooo excited and they rushed to tell everyone. Everyone rejoiced with them.   Then they miscarried and they were equally devastated. It got worse. They found out they could not conceive in the future.  The husband and wife made the decision to adopt. They went through all the hoops, all the forms, all the evaluations, spent a lot of money to get into the process. They were connected with a pregnant young girl who did not want to keep her baby. So they spent months with her waiting until she gave birth. Then the big day happened, so exciting...and the birth mother changed her mind. Devastation again.  Later, they shared their story with others and this being Reno, people knew people who knew people who were related to other people...and they were connected to another woman who was pregnant and did not want to keep her child. The child was born, they brought her home, and then one year later, legally, their family of two became a family of three.


Disappointment and devastation are inevitable in life. Our plans, our dreams mostly never go as we wish. From the biggest hopes and dreams like children, to the smallest of plans; coffee with friends, movies...

How will we react? How will we choose to act?  Too many of us react; with anger, with passive aggressiveness, with active aggressiveness. We gossip. We harbor grudges. We ignore others.  

.Joseph dreamed too. Not only of angels, but of a wife and children, of family. He must have dreamed of a life of joy.  He too must have been disappointed when seemingly all the plans were gone. His response is to do what what he thinks he is supposed to do.

And God says wait. God says Trust. God says Love.  

God’s love made real is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the divine wisdom made incarnate so that we can share and live in that wisdom too. So that we too can fully experience life, even amid devastation, even amid disappointment. So that we can rise above it. We can act so that life is created.

Jesus teaches us that there is always a reality greater than any one of us, greater than anything we can even imagine. A reality called the Kingdom of Heaven. 

Jesus invites us to open ourselves to the possibility of this reality, so that the probability of it 
becoming real grows through our choices and actions.

It is Resurrection which we remember and we celebrate in the Eucharist.  It is also what we celebrate at Christmas. We celebrate new hope. We celebrate new life, new opportunities, new possibilities, new probabilities.

See, we are created for and call to plan, to hope, to dream. We are not called to be passive in life, but to help build the kingdom of Heaven.  These plans, these dreams but include love; the good of others.

Let’s Open ourselves to Christ, to the divine wisdom to find that Hope.
Open ourselves to Christ in our sacraments, in our prayers, in contemplation and meditation.

And here is the rest of the story…  We are also created for mission. This is not just about us and our own personal plans.  Too many people out there are devastated, disappointed, dejected. They find little hope.

WE must incarnate hope. This is not an option, this is our reality as baptized Catholics. The couple in the story were well connected to their own extended families and to a parish community. They received so much support during this time. This, I believe, made the difference.

We must go and offer new possibilities to others, so that the probability of their life grows.

We must offer our forgiveness. We must offer up humility. We must open ourselves to generosity, mercy and compassion. Look at others with God’s eyes.

Imagine what dreams could happen!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

19th Sunday. With just a little faith...

Image
Parents, you are amazing. Each day you wake up and walk into the chaos of life with those special little somethings. Each day you walk into life and make choices, with little preparation, with those kids that are inherently bipolar: angels in one moment, in another, even Satan would be scared of them. Again, there is little prep; there is no easy app for parenting. I will repeat again, I do not mind noisy kids in mass; noisy adults I do, you all know better, but kids…please bring them and have them here. Parents thank you for bringing them and for having the courage and faith to be parents. Recently a friend asked me about depression. He asked me to describe what it is like. I could only give my experience: it is like a fog. It is being so overwhelmed by everything and feeling everything, and lacking the ability to take a step forward, to make a choice. There is no movement, only stagnation. It takes a lot of energy to be able to make a choice, to take a step. Earlier this week I w
Read more

22nd Sunday Following the Messiah

Image
My first car was a 1977 chevy nova, v-6, two doors; under the hood there was so much space. I got it the summer before my sophomore year in college, so I was 18-19. I wanted to change the oil so my dad told me how to do it. He said when I change the filter, hand tighten first, then give a small turn with the wrench, do not overtighten it. Me, being a college man, and knowing everything, gave it a good strong turn and thought well done. Several months later, it was time to change the filter again. I could not get it off. I tried and tried. My dad noticed and came to help. He told me that I had cranked it hard the last time didn’t I. Yup, with a degree of shame. He worked to get that thing off. My Uncle who lived nearby saw the commotion, He came and helped. It took them a long time, and what they did was eventually pound through the tire jack, and twisted it off that way. I learned my lesson; I felt a lot of shame on that one. Being able to hold in tension or conflicting ideals signifie
Read more

2nd Advent - Finding our way in God's Love

Image
Many years ago a friend living in Texas came up to visit me in Fernley. This friend had been born and raised in the city. Anyway, I had asked him what he would like to do and he wanted to go geocaching. Okay, I thought it is March in Northern Nevada, fun! But we went, found a cache located near Lahontan Reservoir, and so we drove out there. I parked the car near the cache and the gps device told us the cache was about 500 feet away. I looked around and had a sense of where it would be, on this hillside. My friend became worried: worried that we would get lost. I said not a problem. What if we lose sight of the car? I looked around, it was Nevada sage, no tree for miles; and again we were only going 500 feet up a hill. I said we will be fine, we will never lose sight of the car and we won’t get lost. We didn’t. I have been lost in the wilderness once. It was scary. I was in Northern New Mexico, in a thick forest and it was an overcast day. I was by myself, and nobody knew where I was, a
Read more