Breath Prayer and Words for the Day: My spirit rejoices in God.
In a heavily patriarchal society, a peasant girl is visited by an angel. The angel reveals God's plan that this young girl is to become the mother of the Christ child. After this heavenly encounter, Mary's head must have been swimming with thoughts and dreams once far beyond her imagination. But now her reality has been re-defined. Now the power structure of her world has been turned on its head. New possibilities. New hope. God's goodness made manifest in the world.
The invitation to rejoice demands a certain amount of audacity on our part. After all, any newscast or newspaper front page is filled with accounts of wrong-doing and the evil that human beings visit upon others. What basis is there for joy? Yet if we bother to look closely we can catalogue and celebrate the daily events that are joyous:
* Picking a child up at the day school
* Family members moving in faithful covenant with one another
* A spirit of love exchanged between caring people
There is much goodness all around us! Jesus taught us to pray," ..on earth as it is in heaven." Imagine sunlight streaming through a magnifying glass and how it creates a concentrated laser-like beam of heat and light. During this season of Advent, we are called to be that magnifying glass. To receive God's love and then concentrate it into pure acts of love and caring. in this way, we too can magnify the Lord. Rejoice! Rejoice! With an uncluttered heart, rejoice!
