2016!

Sorry for the gap between posts, but here is an update and a Reflection from Cricket:
Last year, we sold the house where Cricket's health was not optimal and moved to the North Ga Mtns where we border the Appalachian Trail; cell phones don't work and there are only basic electronics in the home. Her health is now excellent! This curtails our travels (wifi is everywhere as you know), but she is now giving small retreats joyfully on our large property!
Also, Jerry is now teaching Theology at the Marist School and loving every minute of this ministry!

Here is her reflection:

As I am recuperating from oral surgery, I am realizing a special awareness we are given to be drawn closer to Christ in all our circumstances. How often we are hurting, whether it is due to an injury that is physical, mental, or emotional, and we have the opportunity to let that suffering draw us more deeply into Christ, or more deeply into self absorption. Always we are given those very different ways of focusing our attention.

This morning, as I was experiencing the constant discomfort of my surgery, I thought about what Christ suffered. His, of course, to a much deeper degree, and yet I can say I know a little of it. And I can choose this experience of pain to be a time of intimacy and deeper appreciation of what Christ endured for love of us. I can choose, in my own suffering, to dwell on my pain and difficulty, or I can enter into who Christ truly is, and how perfectly he turned everything into an act of love.

Maybe that is what this is about, even more than physical reasons for my surgery. It is, more importantly, a gift for me to enter more deeply into Christ and the power of love that overcomes the destructive subtleties of self-focus.
            “Rejoice in all circumstances,” we are told, Philippians 4:4. Have we even begun to take these experiences in everyday life of pain and discomfort, and use them to come to a deeper awareness of Christ's love for us? Do we seek to know the depth of Christ's love which transcends all things, even evil itself, so that in and through our own trials we come out better, holier, and more Christ like because of what we went through?

Christ has extraordinary ways to help us, grace us, and fashion us into His image. May we use everything we go through with faith in His love, surrender to His will, and a steadfast focus on God instead of self.