The Presence of God in Our Ordinary Lives

Dear Friends,

Already the Christmas trees are long gone, the manger figures, Christmas decorations and albums are stored for another year. Lent looms on the horizon, coinciding this year with Valentine’s Day – a combination to touch our hearts, for sure. But here’s the very important realization that could escape us if we let it.

The Incarnation of the Word, the Son of God, continues to be with us 

today and everyday throughout the year, 

throughout our lives, in our homes and in our world, 

without exception. 

Jesus is one of us.

Sit with that thought as often as you can. Realize what it means for our daily living. We can easily miss the immensity of this act of God, because we are inclined to equate the Incarnation with Jesus, whose new-born life we celebrate at Christmas as a past event. We think of His presence as a thirty-three year experiment – a one shot incursion of God into human history. After His ascension, Jesus “retires” – is gone from this life.

The truth is that God continues to come today. We can be unaware of God’s incarnation today or we can nourish this truth. We nourish it as we pay attention, watch, listen, absorb, catch the God-presence in our ordinary lives, our homes and workplaces, our places of recreation as well as worship, in the places of our chance encounters that stir something good and holy in us.

This sort of living and thinking is not automatic. It comes only with work and practice. But the good news is that the impetus for such God – awareness is already ours – a gift of our Baptism, embedded in our beings when we became one with Christ in the Body of Christ. We were immersed in water, anointed and given the Light of Christ to launch us on our journey of faith. Our parents, godparents and older adults had to see us through, until we could be aware enough of God-with-us, and then the work was ours to carry on.

To add another depth of realization, the Dominican Herbert McCabe tells us that “God loves us personally. It is not some vague, warm feeling for the whole human race. God loves us personally and intimately, more personally and intimately than we can love ourselves. God is more personally concerned for my good and for my happiness right now than I can be for myself.”

As the year unfolds, let the love of God for you unfold. Let it find you growing and becoming all you can be.

It is an incarnational journey we are on.

~ Sister Joan Sobala