February 16 - Tag, We're It!

Certainly, our walk with God is not a game of hide-and-seek, although the Lord tells us we will often find Him tucked away, in secret places of hope where there is no hope. If we have not seen Him for awhile, we could look for His joy even in our grief, or find His peace in the midst of turmoil. If He still seems far removed, we will rediscover the brightness of His countenance when we forgive where we have been woefully wronged, and when the most demanding of our friends and family drive us hard for a mile or so, we may throw the cosmos off balance by offering to accompany them on down the path, perhaps even all the way home.

We will have the opportunity in Cor Unum to gaze deeply into the vocation of a real-life nun who entered a Carmelite monastery at a very early age, and died young within its walls. This young woman, whose life might well have been no more than a blip on the screen of humanity, a drop in the lake of young lives lost, left the world a hallmark of true and usable monasticism. She lived within her cloister with amazing missionary zeal, and she held on to God even as she lay dying, choosing joys she could not feel and electing to have comforts she could not understand.

In return, God gave to her the desire of her heart. Her life and death have probably founded more vocations than the world could tally.

Saint Thèrése of Lisieux made the same decision, nearly in infancy, that Frank Laubach did in his forties. She would hold on to God and not let Him go.

It was Jacob, the surplanter, who loved the birthright. Was he just a grasping trickster, or did he have to have the glorious, incomparable thing that his brother held in contempt? Many, perhaps we ourselves at times, have held in contempt, or at least in limbo, that for which Jesus died, on the cross of our shame.

It is ours, by right of new birth in Him, to walk with God. From Enoch and Abraham, through all the generations of mankind, there have always been those who, because they would have God, found Him and did not let Him go.


"Praying Nun"
Illustration by Ashley