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Be Acknowledged by the Son of Man

4/26/2012

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My mother is in a skilled nursing home in Madison after suffering a stroke. So I have to  fly in two planes each way to visit her from Maryland. Up till now I’ve always prayed silently for God to keep me and the other passengers safe during these flights.

The Closet Christian

But I realized that this was praying on the sly, as it were - not wishing  other passengers to notice that I was talking to God. 
  
One reason for this was that I didn’t want my fear of flying to be obvious. But something more sinister was going on: I was embarrassed to be seen praying.
 
Was I unwilling to let the public know that I was a Christian?
 
That thought upset me. A lot.

(Wo)manning Up...

So I decided to make the Sign of the Cross as the plane was taking off (when I start to pray) and when the plane landed (after my thank-you-God-for-the-safe-flight prayer).

Or Not...
 
But - it would mean acknowledging Christ in public. Gasp!!

You expect priests to be inured to the stares and ridicule of people around them, but it was asking a lot from a member of the laity, who prefers to remain anonymous when traveling, and indeed in general.

Wait a Minute: Doesn't Christ Mention This Topic Somewhere?
 
Then I remembered the words of Scripture:

"I tell you the truth, everyone who acknowledges me publicly here on earth, the Son of Man will also acknowledge in the presence of God's angels.” Luke 12:8 New Living Translation (©2007)

Followed by:

"But whoever disowns me before others will be disowned before the angels of God.” Luke 12:9 New Living Translation (©2007)

There was no pretending I didn't understand the import of those words.
  
(Wo)manning Up - For Real, This Time

Just how humiliating would it really be to make the Sign of the Cross in public? Come on, I wasn’t being called to do something truly scary, like stand up and ask the passengers to join me in prayer!

Was I too weak to give one, small - yet significant - public acknowledgement of Christ?
 
I felt embarrassed about feeling embarrassed, and hoped God would forgive my timidity. If I called myself a Christian, and a Catholic, I had to be prepared to evangelize even in this tiny way. If Christ died on the Cross for me – in a very public humiliation – surely I could manage this minor sacrifice in return?

I am glad to say that as soon as we began taxiing on the runway, I made a big – not furtive – Sign of the Cross and asked God to keep all of us safe. When we landed I did the same, and proceeded to repeat the process for each of my successive three flights.

There, that wasn’t so bad, was it? Baby steps..

God  - One
Satan - A Big Goose Egg

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God Working through Airplanes

4/16/2012

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The Fear

I get very scared when flying. Small planes, in particular, make me feel terribly vulnerable.
 
Twenty years ago, I was on a tiny ten seater flying from St Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands to Puerto Rico. The turbulence was terrifying: I really thought my last moments had come. And I had done nothing I could truly call useful for mankind during my life!
 
Bargain Making and Breaking 
 
So I promised God that if he allowed me to land safely, I would sponsor a child, since I couldn’t have children of my own.
 
We landed safely. I forgot to thank God and did nothing about sponsoring a child.
 
A New Bargain
 
A few months later, on my very next flight – you’ve guessed it – the turbulence was even worse! I apologized to God for not keeping my promise last time, and told him that if he allowed me to live through this flight, I really, really would sponsor a child.
 
As soon as we landed, I thanked God and set to sponsoring not one but two children, as I felt so ashamed of my previous behavior.
 
Give and You Shall Receive
 
I mentioned earlier that I was unable to have children.
 
Shortly after I sponsored those children, I became pregnant with my
son.
 
Have you ever had an experience where you did the right thing and were ‘over-compensated’ for it? If so, I'd love to hear about it :)

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Good Friday: A Chance to Help Christ Carry His Cross?

4/6/2012

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Good Friday

Christ was crucified today. For our sake, He endured being beaten and whipped. He was then made to carry His own cross all the way to Calvary, where He was nailed to the heavy wooden structure and left to die the slow, agonizing and suffocating death of crucifixion.

It was such a horrific way to die that the Romans didn’t even inflict on their own people when they were sentenced to death.

An Unexpected Cross

This past week I was dealt a heavy spiritual blow and my immediate reaction was to feel sorry for myself. I cried whenever I was alone, and every time I was in church. The situation should eventually resolve itself, but instead of focusing on that, I kept asking myself “supposing it doesn’t?”
 
Surely it is no accident that this happened to me shortly before Good Friday? Here was Christ, giving me a cross to bear, one which isn’t even remotely comparable to what He endured, just before our commemoration of His horrible death.

And was I bearing my cross cheerfully? Was I accepting my opportunity to grow in faith?  No!

My God, why Have You Abandoned Me?

I felt very alone in my situation. 

In my own mind I was doomed: I couldn’t look forward to going to Heaven because of unresolved issues in my spiritual life and I looked at others in Church with bitterness because they were going to Heaven. 
 
Everything earthly lost its appeal, and now that I felt threatened with losing God, He became the most important thing to me - as He should always have been!

In short, I was perilously close to committing the ultimate sin of despair.
 
The Road Back Home

With tremendous help from my parish priest, who is giving me great spiritual guidance, my mindset became positive again.
 
His first point was that God loves me, and that I should look to the good things that had just happened in my life. The return of my Mother back to the church, in answer to my prayers, and my son’s amazing Church attendance because of my example, were both huge proofs that God has not abandoned me. Far from it!

But he emphasized that God listens to the prayers of the humble, and that I needed to maintain humility when asking for God’s help with my current situation.

Moving Forward with Faith

I understood how easily I could have been feeling proud because of ‘my successes’ with my mother and my son, and how I’d probably been giving myself credit for God’s work in them. Instead, I should have been grateful that He allowed me to be His instrument. That was the first lesson in humility.

The second was that I should joyfully accept God’s cross for me. I should be humbly happy that He was testing my faith, and giving me an opportunity to grow in love for Him.
 
In his book I Believe in Love, Father D’Elbée said that when Christ gives us a cross to bear, He is allowing us to relieve Him - just a little bit - of
the weight of His own cross. How can I be upset at being given the chance to do that? How can I feel He doesn’t care about me, when He’s inviting me to help Him?
 
When we look at Christ hanging on the cross this Good Friday, we should ask ourselves, how can we – in our own small ways - relieve Him of His  suffering?

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    Hilary Walker

    A fanatic horse rider and writer of Christian Inspirational Fiction, who's beginning to understand that making it to Heaven is a tad more important than winning at horse shows.

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