Deacon Tom Writes ©
“Can anybody help me?”
There was a commercial on TV some time
ago showing a man riding in circles on his new lawn mower while telling viewers
about his financial problems. It’s
not that he was poor, quite the opposite.
He had a lot of money, he just didn’t know how to budget it… In addition to the new lawn mower he
had just purchased, he also complained of having bought a new car that he put in the new house and
the list goes on. Now he is “up to his
eyeballs in debt”. As the
focus of the camera narrows in on him, he looks into it with glazy eyes and asks, “Can anybody help me?” This is a sad but fairly accurate
depiction of our human nature at work. We manage to dig quite a deep hole for
ourselves before we recognize the trouble we are in and our need to ask for
help.
Our spiritual lives can be very similar.
In the reading from Isaiah on this First Sunday of Advent, the beginning of
our new liturgical year, the prophet begs the Lord to come once more to the aid
of His people who now humbly confess their sins… “Why did you let us wander, O Lord, from your ways and harden our
hearts so that we fear you not?” the prophet asks.
The first step in solving a problem is
to recognize that we have one, like the fellow in the commercial reaching out
to “anybody” who might be able to
help him with his financial problems. We do well to take this approach with our
spiritual shortcomings and reach out to God and ask Him to “rend the heavens and come down” to our
rescue.
The image of God as the potter and we
the clay is a powerful one for us to explore this Advent. Just like clay in the
hands of an artisan, God shapes and molds our lives…if we let Him. And that’s
the key; God does not barge into our lives but rather waits for an invitation. Advent is a time for us to realize that
we need to invite Emmanuel into our lives and renew us from the inside out.
Let us invite God into our lives in a
deeper and more intimate way this Advent Season so that He can mold us and
fashion us into whatever beautiful vessel will be most fulfilling for us to
accomplish His will, the plan He has in store for us. On our part, we need to
be watchful so that we may recognize how God is constantly shaping us through
the events, people and the always-changing circumstances of our lives. This Advent let us be watchful for the
many ways God comes to our rescue…
Enjoy the day and Happy New Year too!
Deacon Tom
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