Dai­ly Reflec­tion
Decem­ber 2, 2005

“On that day the deaf shall hear…and the eyes of the blind shall see…”

The week­end before Thanks­giv­ing I had a won­der­ful pre-Thanks­giv­ing/Ad­vent expe­ri­ence of being on retreat at a spir­i­tu­al­i­ty cen­ter in the woods with my women’s prayer group. It was an excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ty to step out of our busy lives into the soli­tude of nature to remem­ber what thank­ful­ness real­ly is. Nature allows us to see, touch, and lis­ten to cre­ation and remem­ber the gifts of the peo­ple in our lives. It was a time of bless­ings - on us, with us, and by us on all that is us. And it was a time to real­ize that even in the midst of the strug­gles, wor­ries, sad­ness, grief and dif­fi­cul­ties that are also a part of our lives, we could acknowl­edge and feel the liv­ing and lov­ing God pres­ence in and among us.

Today’s scrip­tures offer a sort of mini-retreat…a step­ping back to open our­selves to the mean­ing of this time of year.

Isa­iah presents us with an oppor­tu­ni­ty to move out of our hec­tic lives into this Advent time to remem­ber what we may have for­got­ten: God promis­es that, “…the deaf shall hear…the eyes of the blind shall see; The low­ly will find joy in God and the poor rejoice in the Holy One of Israel…; They shall rev­er­ence the Holy One and be in awe of the God of Israel.”

In Matthew, Jesus actu­al­ly gives sight to two blind men who seek him out of the crowd to be healed. Jesus responds to their open­ness and belief, touch­es their eyes and says, “Let it be done for you accord­ing to your faith.”

The psalmist reflects, “One thing I ask, this I seek: To dwell in the house of God all my days.”

How clear­ly it seems to be that God is wait­ing for us…simply to turn to God in the qui­et of our heart…to approach God with our needs, wants, thankfulness…to sim­ply ‘be’ with and in God!

How­ev­er, in our day to day busy-ness of the hol­i­day sea­son, it becomes too easy to become deaf and blind to God’s pres­ence in our midst. My list of ‘to do’s tends to become extra long as I plan for the many gath­er­ings of friends and rel­a­tives, while try­ing to jug­gle work and home com­mit­ments. It is so easy to lose sight of whom I am called to be in the midst of prepar­ing to cel­e­brate and I grow deaf to the real mean­ing of this holy season.

These read­ings remind me to tap back into my retreat week­end and remem­ber what I real­ly am seek­ing. And per­haps it is more about a com­bi­na­tion of what I am seeking/waiting for…and that God is seeking/waiting for me to slow down enough to rec­og­nize and then real-ize the gift of the lov­ing pres­ence of God’s spir­it in my life.

My prayer for me and for you is that we each will find the qui­et space in our lives to allow the waiting/seeking of God to find a home in our hearts and in our lives.