A LITTLE CHOPIN IS GOOD FOR YOU

My next post will be on January 30th. For now enjoy a little Chopin: It's good for you. (I know it's good for me.) Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhUrIGHB0aY.

Mark

FEARFULLY AND WONDERFULLY MADE; MARVELOUS ARE YOUR WORKS

My previous posting was under the title "IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, SON & HOLY SPIRIT -- AND I LOVE YOU TOO". I mentioned God's presence with life as it develops in the womb.

Today I want to step into an animation of prenatal life developing. The brilliant production was developed by Alexander Tsiarus. It's called CONCEPTION TO BIRTH. We get a hint of the Almighty's presence with every child developing in the mother's womb -- just as the Scriptures say. It's a stunning video. Please go to http://www.ted.com/talks/alexander_tsiaras_conception_to_birth_visualized.html 

Special thanks to TED.com.

Mark

"IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, SON & HOLY SPIRIT -- AND I LOVE YOU TOO.

Many, many blogs ago I quoted C.S. Lewis:

"From our earliest childhoods we remember that before our own elders thought us capable of "understanding" anything, we already had spiritual experiences as pure and momentous as anything we have undergone since. ... From Christianity itself we learn there is a level -- in the long run the only level of importance -- on which the learned and the adult have no advantage at all over the simple and the child."

An illustration of this simple yet profound truth was illustrated recently when my son told me about how his four year old daughter prays. If my granddaughter is saying grace or some other prayer she begins with words similar to this: "In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and I love you too." I love you too? When I heard this, I felt a prompting by the Holy Spirit that something significant was being revealed to those of us who are open to the truth of what a little girl was stating as a matter of fact and as simple as you please! 

It's as though she is simply responding to what she has already been aware of and understood throughout her day. Don't miss it. We were privileged to hear half of an ongoing spiritual discussion between God and a little girl still not jaded by the world. Is it possible that she (and other children) are better attuned, in her innocence, to God's whisper of love that becomes dulled with age and cynicism? Is it possible that she (and other children) have a better understanding than their elders of what Jesus said:

"Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it." (Mark 10.14-15)

When Jesus said "I tell you the truth",  we had better sit up and take notice! Children have a special place in the kingdom of God. And that includes children still in the womb. (Psalm 139.13-16,  Jeremiah 1.4-5). This is not an impersonal oversight of an impersonal God.  An intimate and loving God even mentions the unborn child by name (Isaiah 49.1. Also see verse 5). What about unwantedness? Well, God mentions that too (Isaiah 49.15).

Do small children have an indistinct, residual, primordial inkling of that earlier intimacy with God in the womb that can not be articulated? I am not prepared to deny it. 

Never discount the power of a child's prayers.

Mark

 

ABORTION AND FORGIVENESS

I came across the video below about forgiveness after abortion. In many ways it parallels the story of my wife and me: Christians with abortion in their past. Christians know that God has forgiven them but they have trouble forgiving themselves. If we only knew how many women sitting in the pews of our churches have been physically, emotionally and spiritually scarred by abortion, ... we would be shocked. And what about the fathers of aborted children? Abortion is so pervasive in our culture!

LaRee and I aborted our first child who would have been 40 years old today had she lived.  We grieved our abortion for decades. Men and women tend to grieve differently. LaRee kept her grief inside -- only bringing our bitter experience into the open occasionally when she encountered an abortion minded couple. We would warn them that abortion does not solve the problem of unwanted pregnancy, it only creates new problems. I became heavily involved in the pro-Life movement -- trying to assuage my guilt. We knew God had forgiven us but we did not forgive ourselves. Only in recent years did we finally forgive ourselves and release that spiritual burden. See the link at the bottom of this post for another couple's story many years after ours.

If you have had an abortion or was involved in one (men) and want to talk to someone, feel free to write to LaRee or me at HumanLifeMatters@shaw.ca . As the title of the email suggests, every life matters and that includes you. God wants us to live in the freedom of His forgiveness.

See the video here -
http://www.godvine.com/Girl-Who-Had-an-Abortion-Uses-her-Pain-to-Help-Others-1051.html

Mark

Google Advertising

I have decided to allow Google's to advertise on my blog. They posted inappropriate ads previously and I withdrew from their program. In the interests of trying to generate revenue, I'll try again and see how it goes.

MDP

THE WHY OF SUFFERING

Further to my earlier post, my wife, LaRee, and I addressed about 75 Christian medical students who came from across Canada's three western provinces to hear us.

We spoke about our sorrows and grief that have accompanied our twenty-eight years living with chronic, degenerative multiple sclerosis. We shared insights we have gained from our Christian perspectives. I spoke about the terror of having an aggressive version of MS. LaRee spoke about the agony of watching me go through what seemed like endless MS attacks ― unable to stop them. As she said, each attack took her husband further from the healthy man she married. She mourned the irrevocable changes in me, and our lives. The Mark she married was gone as surely as if I had died, leaving a different me to emerge from the fire of a vicious and chronic disease. I, too, grieved the death of the healthy and able-bodied man I once was. The shocking new Mark was triplegic and electric wheelchair dependent!

There was point in our grief journey when it seemed as though we metaphorically stood at the grave of the old Mark and our life together that we once imagined. We could have chosen to stay at the grave site and let bitterness take hold of us or we could choose to step over the grave and journey onward, looking for whatever the altered future held in store.

What and who would we find if we were open to God’s leading? We did not know. Were we willing to put our suffering, our fears, our sorrow and our brokenness into His care?  The choice was ours. We could curse God or trust him. We chose to trust even though the stakes seemed so horribly high, and we did not understand why we were suffering.

It became apparent that God was inviting us to set aside self-interest and a desire to be in control of our lives and unite our suffering with Christ’s redemptive suffering. We were being called to follow him with complete abandon. Over time, we slowly began to detect that we were being internally transformed. We realized that our suffering was having a purifying effect.

When viewed through a lens of Christ’s redemptive suffering our suffering was a vehicle to draw us closer to Christ’s divine love – which transcends human pain – if sufferers allow it. We began to discover that our tears of grief and pain could flow together with tears of joy and contentment at nothing more than a mere inkling of His divine love. Divine love overcomes fear.

There is nothing sweeter to the human soul than the divine love of Jesus Christ. Christ’s perfect love has existed beside a crimson thread of human suffering that can be traced throughout the course of human history dating back 2,000 years. LaRee and I are not unique.

Comprehending the meaning of our suffering – within God’s divine and perfect love – is to be found at the Cross of Christ. We read in 1John 3.16a: “The way we came to know love was that He laid down his life for us. …”

We are rich by Christ giving up everything. Through Christ’s death we can truly live.

Pope John Paul II once said, “[I]n order to perceive the true answer to the “why” of suffering, we must look to the revelation of divine love, and the ultimate source of meaning of everything that exists.” (Salvifici Doloris, 1984.) He told us that love is the richest source of meaning in suffering and that it remains a mystery. 

The why of suffering is understood within the context of Christ’s self-sacrificing love that led to his suffering, death and Resurrection on our behalf.  

To follow Christ with complete abandon (as I stated earlier in this post) requires that we surrender to Him and His love, and be content to accept wherever that may take us. In as much as we do this, we can discover a marvellous and heartrending irony: It is only in surrender that we can discover spiritual freedom and liberty in Christ. It is more important that we understand than be understood. This is the blessing of suffering that I have discovered throughout twenty-eight years with chronic degenerative disease that is slowly turning my body into a living carcass.  

LaRee’s and my grief journey is only part of a larger pilgrimage that is preparing us for heaven.  We will yet rest in the full light and warmth of the perfect divine love of Christ Jesus. We will finally know just as we are known. Amen.

Mark

Article for Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day in America. In honor of the holiday, I wrote an article that appeared in CatholicLane under the title "Today's Struggle for Human Rights". See http://catholiclane.com/todays-struggle-for-human-rights/   -- MDP