Welcome to our blog! This is a place to share ideas, thoughts, concerns and joys of our faith journey. I'll be posting sporadically, but hope you will feel free to comment and join in the discussions.

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

The Miracle of Gifts and Timing

This is not a post about Christmas gifts. You could argue that it is about gifts all wrapped up, but not in the way you might think. To explain...

I accompanied our daughter to a doctor appointment the other day. She wasn't supposed to drive home and her hubby could not accompany her this time. I, as always, am happy to oblige and take her anywhere. So we're sitting in the waiting room, waiting of course, and talking quietly and sharing little asides about this and that. When both of us notice that the receptionist is trying to talk to someone on the phone. She is having trouble because the women on the other end of the conversation is speaking Spanish and the receptionist doesn't. No habla espanol. My daughter looks at me with raised eyebrows. She is a Spanish teacher for elementary and middle school aged children. She spent half a year in Spain. She looks at the desperate woman behind the desk, sighs, then gets up and enters the conversation on the phone. The Spanish speaking woman speaks rapidly and her phone keeps breaking up, but eventually between the receptionist and my daughter, they get the information needed so that when the person who works in the office who DOES speak Spanish gets there, she will have the name and phone number of the caller. She comes back and sits down next to me. I tell her how great that was that she just went over to help. She shrugs, "no big deal," she says.

But you see, by us being there in the waiting room at that moment when those two women needed to communicate, that IS a big deal! To them this was important. And my daughter didn't appreciate the gift she has at the moment. I thought of it as a holy moment. People will say I'm making too much of this, but really, at THAT moment, at THAT time this woman called who needed help. Yep, that was a little miracle right there. A miracle of gifts and timing.



Saturday, November 12, 2016

The Moon and Stars

On November 14, according to the weather people, whom I don't always believe, and the astronomists around the world, whom I do, there will be a Supermoon. It is the closest the moon will have ventured to the planet earth since January 1948. It will not be seen like this again until 2034.

I like looking at the night sky. I'm not too adept at finding the constellations, but as long as there is something up there twinkling, I just like looking up. Once, when I was in the island of Maui, and the ambient light wa almost nonexistent, the sky looked like a piece of velvet with diamonds sprinkled across it. It was breath-taking.

And as I gaze upwards, I can't help thinking about the Creator. Who thought this stuff up? How could such wondrous and fantastic things like, planets, suns, nebulas and galaxies come into being? It makes me feel, not insignificant as I've heard others describe it, but yearning. Longing to meet such a God that has such powers of beauty and awe at his fingertips! What a fabulous thing to have created! And I get to see it! And so do you, if you care to, that is. So look up that night and think of the Supreme Being in all his mighty heavens, and marvel at those things. I'll be right there looking, too.