All things are in the hands of the Lord, as the reading from Samuel in the Morning Prayer today reminds us. I reflect on this briefly today after having a busy night—family responsibility, as well as work taken home, is part of being a deacon. Today required a little more of me.
The diaconate is really a very different kind of ordained ministry in that in most cases it involves a job during the day and family to care for and to participate with in life. Often life, my family and work, calls me to participate in ways that I don’t always anticipate but that I meet with readiness.
I’m quite thankful for my family. They offer me exactly what I need in order to do what I do at the parish and at school. They offer the balance I need and thus I am able to keep things in the proper perspective. Our life is in the hands of the Lord: God has made us to be who we are. God gives us what we have so that we might consecrate it and sanctify it as his instruments.
God asks us to take responsibility in what he has given us. He asks us to take ownership and identify with the life we have. Life is not given to us to run away from or to hide from its difficulties and challenges. God asks us to face it head on with faith. God urges us to meet difficult situations—and perhaps difficult people—with strength, with love, with unfailing faith.
…the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, and he has set the world upon them. He will guard the footsteps of his faithful ones… (from 1 Sam. 2)
Let us go forth this day to be who he has made us be, and let us do it with faith.
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