By His Grace

Gifts

Each quarter, our staff takes a one day individual prayer retreat. I wanted to share about my most recent one.

 

After my last prayer retreat, I learned that I do better with 24 hours than 8 because I seem to need that much time to separate from daily life. So I combined a trip to the next Women’s Retreat location with my prayer day. The retreat center is a seminary made up of beautiful, grand brick and white columned buildings from the early 1900’s, set on a lake surrounded by 800 acres of trees. As I was driving in, a deer was nibbling on the grass along the road, and I immediately felt the tension from the drive up drain away.  After checking in, my first order of business was to take pictures for the retreat marketing next year. I figured I’d get the work stuff out of the way, so I could enjoy the rest of the time.

 

One of my stops was the old gymnasium. The custodian was mopping the floors. So to keep from alarming him, I told him I was taking pictures for a brochure. He said that I had to visit the indoor pool and the underground racquetball courts and pointed to a thin winding staircase at the back of the building. I flipped on the light and started down the wooden stairs. It felt like I was walking into a Sherlock Holmes movie. At the bottom I found a worn wooden bench where you would stop to put on your shoes before going into the ball courts. Here, I sat down to enjoy the cool air and adjust to the light streaming in the small line of windows along the ceiling.

 

I started thinking about all the people who had who sat on this bench. They were Catholic men mostly, called to be priests who gave up everything normal in their lives in order to pursue their passion for Christ and His church. Sometimes, when I move to a new place, the sheer work of getting established can feel overwhelming. I feel like I’ve had to walk away from so much familiar and comfortable. And yet, I really didn’t actually have to give up that much to serve Christ. I was married, something theses men could not do. I get to choose (at least to some extent!) where I live, a decision they gave to the church to be sent wherever they were needed. I have Skype and e-mail and such to stay connected to my family; they had to rely on boats and letters and often didn’t hear for months or years from those they loved. They sometimes risked their lives, I risk what…? It was both sobering and comforting to think of how easy I have it in the my service of our God in this age that I live.

 

After a while, my eyes adjusted enough to see a door leading out the back. Upon opening it, I discovered I was a near the water line of the lake. So I wander along the edge for a while before heading back up the hill to explore the other buildings on the campus. The next stop was the library. It was breathtaking with soaring ceilings, ornately carved walls and columns, and shimmering chandeliers. You should know that I love libraries – the quiet, the musty smell of old books, the little nooks to study – but I think this might be the most incredible one I’ve ever entered. I roamed the stacks and fingered the gold embossed bindings. And I started thinking about the fact that I could read. In the history of the world, I am rare; first because I have access to books via the printing press, next because I live where we are rich enough to own books, but also because I am a woman. It made me start to cry. The tears were out of gratitude and amazement at the gifts of God that I do not deserve. Why was I born now? Why do I have all the luxuries my life affords me? Surely I did not do anything to earn it. No, it is God’s choice to set me in this place at this point in history.

 

This theme of recognition continued throughout my stay... as I ate a delicious variety of food that I did not prepare, as I slept on a bed with sheets and mattress springs, as I washed my hair with sweet smelling shampoo in a warm shower, as I scribbled my thoughts into a paper journal. Each of these things is rare. Each something I did not choose for myself. My prayer retreat was not so much about words or well crafted prayers, but about basking in the incredible gifts of God and rejoicing with thanksgiving for his gracious generosity to me.

New blooms

“My life is like a garden - never blooming the same way twice.”

I can’t take credit for this quote, although I have no idea where it came from. But I can say for sure it’s true. Last year all along the front of the flower bed that runs the length of the back yard, there was this profusion of pink petals. Once they started blooming, they just kept coming, eventually spilling over the beams that make up the bed. I would often just look out the window at the many flowers stretching up to the sky, and I always had a clump of them on my kitchen table.

 

So this year I was excited to see the first pink flower open up. And they did bloom in large amounts for about a month. Then they stopped. I have no idea why. I did what my gardening friend suggested which was “deadhead” (for those of you non-gardener types like me it simply means you cut the dead flower heads off the stems so the plant will think it needs to produce more flowers in order to have seeds for next year). I tried giving them more water. Less water. Nothing. Now the bed looks barren and boring and I’m wondering what happened.

 

Since I’m trying to understand life through the garden, I asked God to show me what it all means. He reminded me that the garden of life is not static, but ever changing. Sometimes he wants us to grow new flowers of virtue, ones that may not be as exciting as before or as noticeable to other people, but bring him glory nonetheless. This season, I had more blooms from two other plants that were smaller and not so amazing. They grew right behind the pink ones, and I didn’t really notice them last year. Yet they have their own beauty in just a few blossoms. Maybe I would have liked the pink ones, but there were still flowers in my garden.

 

He also reminded me that I do not control the results. I am to be faithful to tend and water, to pray and give, to serve and love. But what happens from there is not something I can fully take credit for. The virtue in my life is both a result of my faithfulness but even more importantly, God’s faithfulness. I think my favorite verse in the Bible is from Philippians 2:12-13, “…continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” I have a part in making the salvation God has given real in every part of my life, yet he is the one who actually does the work that he purposes to do. He brings the flowers of virtue, and so he chooses which ones will bloom each year in the garden. And it never seems to bloom the same way twice.