‘Tomorrow is a new day,” says reader Krismitch and she is RIGHT. Today IS a new day and so far my kids and I have been getting along smoothly. 🙂 Don’t get too excited…the day didn’t start without some drama. We were rushing this morning to get in the car and head over to my in-laws when the kids were asking why I would have the glove compartment open and everything flung about.
WHAT?!
I opened the driver’s side door and I leaned over to put my purse down and at the same time saw cigarette ash lying in my seat, I looked up to see what the kids were referring to and saw how all of junk I did have tucked away in compartments in my car was now flung about. It obviously was useless junk even to a robber because he(or she) didn’t bother to steel one thing. I didn’t have anything in my car to take except for three copies of my book and low and behold they were still there. I guess the theif didn’t feel like reading this Christmas. 😉 Infuriated that some stranger violated our privacy I wiped the cigarette ash away only to find it BURNT my seat! Not that my 2004 Tahoe wasn’t trashed to begin with but really? Now I have a cigarette burn on the seat, ugh. 🙁
On our way to my inlaws Seth asked me if I was afraid. “No,” I answered truthfully. “Why?” He looked at me and I could see him struggling with whether or not he should feel fear. “Doesn’t that scare you that they went through your car in our driveway while we were at home?”
In all honesty he has every right to feel fear and maybe if I weren’t so angry about my privacy being violated I might have felt that same fear. But then I caught a mental picture of what I felt like this theif might have looked like. Some teenager or kid in his early 20’s from a broken home itchin to find a perfect score of cash or something to sell to get his next ‘fix’…or maybe to buy something to eat… he/she is someones son, someones daughter, God’s child.
In My Daily Bread this morning I read, “without the virtue of charity, all other virtues lose their supernatural value. What good would it do you to believe in Me, or to hope in Me, if you did not love Me?”
You see, I beleive when God asks us to love Him He is requesting that we learn to love Him through His children. It goes on to say, “This love must be shown in a sincere daily effort to please Me, no matter how disagreeable the task at hand.”
Today I felt an empathy (not sympathy) for this robber. They, too, have a story. Granted, he didn’t get anything of mine and had he/she hurt me or my family I think this task would be even harder for me to endure, BUT regardless God guided me away from fear and into this gift of being charitable.
As we draw to the final days of Advent and get to rejoice in the birth of our savior I think it is important to learn from our Blessed Mother and Joseph as they had to endure the hardship of being charitable to those that were taking away their basic needs of comfort, warmth and security. All of the people the holy family encountered on the way into Bethlehem did not realize that they were witnessing their salvation in the making. Mary and Joseph were human so they very well had the tendancy to want to be mad at the injustice or fear the unknown of where they would find a place so Mary could give birth. But we know they both were filled with the Holy Spirit guiding them, giving them internal comfort knowing that all would be fine because was with them – literally.
I pray for the young man/woman who felt so desperate that they took the chance to climb into someone’s car in a lit driveway… I pray that one day they will come to recognize the life of Christ that they hold within them.
December 23, 2010
Thursday of the
Fourth Week of Advent
Readings: Mal 3:1-4, 23-24; Lk 1:57-66
Thus says the Lord GOD:
Lo, I am sending my messenger
to prepare the way before me.
Mal 3:1
While the joy of Christmas that we already anticipate
fills us with hope, it spurs us at the same time to proclaim
to everyone God’s presence in our midst.
Angelus
December 23, 2007
Blessings
Shannon