Into Your Hands

Sometimes one can be so sure about one's desire to live a life fully for God, but quite unsure about what would be the best way for this to happen. Unsure and at times impatient, wanting things to be clear right away, wanting to jump right into action so that one can feel that at least one is DOING something.

When to take action and when to stay still? When to reach out in service to others and when to reach out through quiet but active prayer? When to take courageous moves in new directions outside of the comfort zone, and when to just wait with full trust that He will cue when the timing is right? When to DO... and when to just BE...

It is harder to keep still, to just BE for the meantime, and to listen. To be mindful that timing is His, that the WHEN and the HOW will come when He decides to let it be known.

The different Holy Week recollection talks as well as homilies the past days centered around the theme of God loving us first and how loving Him back calls us to love others, especially those who are in great need of help, more concretely. To love in the way He loves. Or at least, to keep trying to do so. It is easy to desire to live this truth, but much more difficult to live this out concretely, consistently, creatively and true to what He intends for us.

With all of these in mind, I find some consolation from the verses of a simple song we learned in grade school, and which also contain the final of the Seven Last Words of Jesus on the cross:

"Into Your Hands, I commend my spirit Oh Lord
Into Your Hands, I commend my life"

I surrender my life to Him, trusting that He will help me properly discern His will.

For now, I will just BE... in His Hands.

Looking Forward

Lent began with an effort on Ash Wednesday to fast from any intake of food or liquid for 12 hours. It was easier said than done especially since the office environment is one where food is the favorite pastime of everyone. Come the 12th hour, I was already dizzy from the hunger but was able to draw strength from within to overcome it. The experience made me realize that strength of will is something that we can cultivate with conscious effort and with prayer.

The past few weeks I've felt my heart stirred many times and in many ways both during and outside of prayer. It's been such a graced season. "Dear Lord, how truly present you are!" I've found myself saying to Him. "How true it is that You love us first." I long to curl up like a little child and rest "in the palm of his Hand" like the prayer goes. And this while remembering His great sacrifice of love as concretized by His suffering and death on the cross.

My resolve to lay my whole being at His feet and offer the rest of my life for Him to use as He pleases is as strong as ever. And like the fasting experience, the strength to make good this offering will have to come from conscious effort, much prayer and a continued going back to the experience of being loved by Him first.

"Oh dearest, dearest Lord, make me worthy of your Love. Teach me to want only what You want, to live and work only in the way You want me to do so, to be open to everything from and for You..."

A "SAMPLE" way of living for Him, until it becomes clearer how else to love Him better:

S - implicity of lifestyle
A - cceptance of self and others
M -ission
P - resence
L - istening with love
E - mbracing His cross

The graces of Lent!