Our time

When someone passes away, we tell each other that maybe "it was just their time to go". We seem to use this as a comfort more than a realisation. But do we really know what that means - "its our time". A lot of the time when we say those words, many of us mean that God took them because it was their time to join Him in heaven but do we really understand that and do we really mean what we say when we say those words?

When God calls us to do something we humbly obey and follow his guidance which always ends in joy and success. As Christians, we believe and often express our excitement to join the Lord again in heaven but when the time arrives, we get scared, worried and sad. This confuses me. If we spend our life, no matter how long or short it is, expressing our joy to meet Him again, then why do we get scared and sad. Isn't this what we have been working towards our whole life on earth? Eternal life with the Lord?

This Thursday was Ascension Day and we celebrate it by having a special mass hearing about Jesus' rising into heaven. I often wonder how we would feel if we or the people around us sees our soul rise to heaven when we pass away. Would we still be sad or would it give us joy and/or peace knowing that our loved one's soul is going where we believe it to be?

To me, I can only imagine the scene when Jesus rose. I imagine tears being spent and then all of a sudden bright light showers the skies as Jesus ascends into heaven and the light stops the tears and showers their grief with peace and love, helping them know that even though it was Jesus' time to leave them, He will always be filled with joy, peace and love in heaven. An awesome sight!

On the flip side, I can't imagine if one of our loved one's souls goes the other way. Would that be dark and depressing for the soul and us? But yet, would it also still give us peace in "knowing"? We are very much a "see it to believe it" society and I wonder if this also gets in the way of our faith, of believing in the "unseen"?

Honestly, what I think it comes down to, is we know it happens because God shows us with Jesus and we just have to keep having faith that God knows and that is all that really matters at the end of the day. 

The Bible tells us that their is a time for everything, that God has a plan for each of us and we are in His book. We just have to keep trusting that He knows what's best for us, when He needs us to join Him and be filled with His joy, peace and love.

God’s Fruit Basket

Many homes have fruit in a bowl or basket, readily available for everyone to enjoy. We do this as we know fruit is healthy and good for us. It promotes good living. God’s fruits of the Spirit are good for us too. It too promotes a good life.

Love

For most of us, loving our family and friends come easy to us. However, God wants us to love everyone. This is not easy as loving people we don’t know are difficult. We can also find it difficult love our family and friends when they let us down. God wants us to love unconditionally regardless of choices made, lifestyles, colour, etc. He also wants us to love even when we don’t get loved back because God loves us. God loves us unconditionally even when we stray away from Him.

Joy

We should feel joy daily because as a Christian, we walk in the presence of God. Believing in God and having faith enables the Holy Spirit to fill us with joy and view each day as blessed gift. God’s joy fills us and we in turn, can share His joy with others.

Peace

Walking with God should give us peace but we don’t always feel peaceful. We should have peace in our mind, body and soul. This is also not easy to achieve. There are many things around us that eat at our peace and make us feel restless and uncomfortable. We can find this inner peace by never forgetting that God is in control and holds our hand during the good and bad.

Patience

This is a big one, well, for me at least. Being a parent, our patience is tested on a daily basis. We experience this regardless of their ages. As human beings, we become impatient with a lot thing in our lives such as our careers, wealth, relationships and life in general.

The saying “patience is a virtue” is very true as if we can have more and more patience we will start feeling at peace, experiencing God’s joy and love.

Kindness

We all could do with a bit of kindness. Kindness can be expressed merely by using our manners, “yes ma’am, no ma’am”. I feel good when I have shown kindness especially to someone who seems to be moody and/or rude. Their whole demeanour changes when you use manners to show your appreciation. Most times they will actually look up and smile at you.

Kindness should always be shown even if you think the person doesn’t deserve it. I try to make it a habit as I feel it’s a great habit to have. I don’t think kindness is earned, it is felt and expressed. Kindness changes the other person’s perception of you.

Our God is a kind God who shows mercy and He wants us to be kind as he has been kind to us.

Goodness

This could mean different things. Goodness could be that you are a genuinely good person. You respect and help others. You are positive and believe in yourself and others.

Goodness could also mean morals. It could be a person who has good morals and values and is not embarrassed to share them with others. Goodness is what you feel inside yourself, how you possibly conduct yourself.  I think goodness can be felt naturally and I think that it could also relate to the decisions we make.

Faithfulness

Having faith is believing in the unseen as mentioned in Hebrews 11:1-2. We always tell each other to keep the faith but what does that really mean. This means having faith in God that He will create the outcome that’s right for us. We forget that God is our Father and we are his children hence the fact that sometimes we don’t like his decisions even if deep down we know it’s good for us.

Faith believes in the good of people, believing in ourselves that we can get through with God’s help. Faith believes that our family and friends will be there for us no matter what decisions we make and what happens.

The faith we have in God is the faith He places in us.

Gentleness

To be gentle is to respect others and not to be rude on purpose. Being gentle and caring shows good character and reflects a part of your personality. It is not weak to be gentle as it shows that you have the ability to consider everything around you.

I think gentleness can also encourage kindness, patience and love. God wants us to treat others as we would like to be treated.

Self-control

Self-control is another big hurdle for many of us. God wants us to practice self-control in all situations and this is not always easy. Anger is due to a lack of self-control. Self-control is also related to sin as if we practice self-control there is less opportunity to sin.

It is also a personal choice. You have the free will to decide to show self-control or lose control and possibly hurt those around you.

We should allow ourselves to feel emotions such as anger but it is want we do with it that shows our self-control. We can also practice self-control when it comes to alcohol, partying and relationships.

Self-control is also God often testing our patience, faithfulness and goodness.

The wonderful thing about God’s fruit basket is that it never empties. No matter how many times we use the fruits of the Spirit, God always tops up the basket so we never run out.

Staying in tune

Doctors, therapists etc keep telling us to listen to our bodies. They tell us to take note when our body changes or feels differently because our body is trying to tell us that something is not necessarily right.

Many of us heed this advice, for example, when we keep getting headaches, we consider having our eyes tested, maybe stress is the cause and/or eventually go for a check up. Another example is when our muscles pain after exercising for a while, we consider reducing or stopping exercising for a while or soak our muscles. Our body talks...we listen.

We can listen to our bodies yet we find it difficult to stay in tune and listen to God.

We notice God's works around us and we all definitely notice when he answers our prayers the why we wanted but we don't always listen.

In this regard we are like children. As parents, sometimes you feel you tell your child to listen to you more than you hug them. Aren't we sometimes like that when God talks? Like children, we only hear what we want to hear, what we like to hear and the answer we are waiting to hear. However, we don't like to hear things God wants us to hear, wants us to learn and many times we could be missing out on great works in our life.

I sometimes wonder if God is like us earthly parents, asking if our ears work or if they are ornaments. Moaning to the angels if we ever hear Him or if we also have selective hearing like our children.

So....how do we stay in tune with God?

I think we can do this by being SILENT. Finding a comfortable space, praying to ask God to speak to us in our silence.

We are always encouraged to talk to God which I fully agree with but maybe sometimes that is all we do. Talk, talk, talk and forget to be quiet, just listen.

In our silence God could give and show us important messages, lay our next step on our hearts and breath His love and grace onto us and give us the confidence we need to take HIS next step for us.

LISTEN..........

We listen to our body now take the time to listen to the One who created it.