To everyone who received a “test” message from this site this past Tuesday – I am sorry. The truth is, I was working on a new design for the site and thought I was on the practice page. I was not.
Even as I hit the “activate” button, my mind clicked in and I grabbed the air – “nooooooooo.” But it was too late. I was hoping most of you would think it was a system-generated test. But I must confess my mistake.
And you were so gracious – you replied that you had received the test, and you tried to click on the link, but it went nowhere. The management regrets the error.
The management regrets . . . We spend a good deal of our lives – probably more than we should – regretting our mistakes. Oh, I wish I hadn’t done that. I wish I had stayed in school. I should have listened to my father. I should not have spent that money. I should not have said that. I should not have eaten the cookie.
Let it go, they say. There is nothing you can do about it, they advise. We all make mistakes, they add. So we let it go – almost. But often we hang on to it with a little thread of a tether. And we yank on it from time to time to remind ourselves of the awfulness of it all.
We allow the regrets of the past to determine the course of our futures. And there is some healthiness in that – we would hope we learn from our mistakes. But there is a deeper learning to be had that is captured in a wise phrase I heard recently – whenever the past comes into the present it is always for healing.
We call it redemption, and it is that for which God became incarnate in Christ and lived among us. In redemption the old is not just forgiven – as significant as that is – it is turned inside out and given new purpose. Forgiveness is always about bringing forth new life. Ezekiel saw it when “dem dry bones” put on flesh and blood and danced up out of that valley (37:4-10).
This is much to make out of a simple little mistake of hitting the wrong button on my computer keyboard on a Tuesday evening. But often our little lives are microcosms of the larger life in which we all participate. In God’s economy nothing is wasted, and every moment is a teachable moment.
Forgiven and available for redemption. May the healing begin.
C. S. Lewis on Christian morality. Listen to this week’s class led by James R. Dennis, O.P.
Catch author Ben Morse at Viva Bookstore today, Friday, Oct 18, 4 to 6:30 pm Join him for workshops on Saturday at Church of Reconciliation, San Antonio. More info here.
Dear Girl, you are the one you have been waiting for.
I bought the piece intending to give it to a young woman I know. Then I decided it was a message I needed to hear myself. I wasn’t too sure I understood it, but somehow it spoke truth to me.
“Are you the one we’ve been waiting for?” John’s disciples came asking Jesus (Matthew 11:2).
“Go tell John what you see,” Jesus replied – the lame walk, the blind see, the deaf hear, and the good news is all over the place.
Seizing the teachable moment, Jesus turned to the crowd surrounding him and put the question to them: “And you – who is it you are waiting for?” A reed swaying in the wind? A man dressed in fine clothes? A prophet? (11:7-9).
Never mind answering, he added. You do not have ears to hear it. You want whom you want. You want one who will tell you what you want to hear, one who will dance to your pipes and mourn at your dirges. You want to play the tune and have God almighty adjust himself to the pitch (11:17).
For whom do we wait? In what do we invest all our hope?
It happens sometimes with a piece of art that you can scrape away the top layer of paint to reveal a different drawing underneath. Artists call it pentimento. An artist at the work of creating will envision the final piece in a certain way, but in the act of creating will see other ways of presentation. A tree originally envisioned as upright might end up bent over in the final work. A hand in the subject’s lap turns out to be a hand to the heart.
I wondered what the pentimento might be beneath the finished portrait of the lovely, innocent young woman.
I wondered about the pentimento beneath the “you” and the “me” that we present to the world. How closely do we now project the original intent of our creator? And have the changes been of His making or our own?
We can spend our entire lives desperately trying to find “the one” – the one thing, the one plan, the one lover, the one possession by which our lives will finally be fulfilled. We change our addresses, we change our hair, we adopt personas that do not belong to us. We dance to the pipes of others and sing dirges about things we do not truly mourn.
Nothing satisfies. Until we look inward, way down deep inside, to touch “the one” of God’s creation and Christ’s redeeming.
You are the one you have been waiting for. Not the you of your creation; the you of God’s creation. When you find it, buy it, take it home, hang it on your wall. That’s what I’m going to do. I think maybe I understand it now.
Marjorie George is editor of ReflectionsOnline and Reflections magazine. Reach her at marjorie.george@dtx.org.