The "Desert University"

"The desert is the university where God teaches His people".

A mother camel and her baby are talking one day and the baby camel asks, “Mom why have we got these huge three-toed feet?” The mother replies, “To enable us trek across the soft sand of the desert without sinking.” “And why have we got these long, heavy eyelashes?” “To keep the sand out of our eyes on the trips through the desert ”replies the mother camel. “And Mom, why have we got these big humps on our backs?” The mother, now a little impatient with the boy replies, “They are there to help us store fat for our long treks across the desert, so we can go without water for long periods.” “OK, I get it!” says the baby camel, “We have huge feet to stop us sinking, long eyelashes to keep the sand from our eyes and humps to store water. Then, Mom, why the heck are we here in the Toronto zoo?” Modern life sometimes makes one feel like a camel in a zoo.

And like camels in a zoo we need sometimes to go into the desert in order to discover who we truly are. Lent invites us to enter into this kind of desert experience. In the desert we leave most of these voices behind to focus on distinguishing between the guiding voice of God and the tempting voice of Satan. The desert is the university where God teaches His people.

By MMM

Wisdom of the Timid...

The timid ones with their silent characteristics are the wisest, for in silence the truth is told. «Do you know what charm is? It is to hear a yes as an answer without having asked anything. The sad ones have two reasons for being so: they ignore or expect. True generosity towards the future consists in giving everything in the present. I love life, so true that I have no imagination for what is not life. There is no generous love other than that which is both transient and singular. The characteristic of the absurd man is to not believe in the deep meaning of things. He trespasses, stores and burns the warm or charming faces of the world. Time walks with him. The absurd man is the one who does not separate himself from time.

Information...

"More information is always better than less. When people know the reason things are happening, even if it's bad news, they can adjust their expectations and react accordingly. Keeping people in the dark only serves to stir negative emotions" 

 Simon Sinek

Blessed Trinity - Perfection of Love.

The Holy Trinity, whose feast we celebrate today, is outside the reach of time and beyond the grasp of human reasoning. It is a mystery of our faith. We can only fumble in the dark in search of glimmers of light. “Two is company, three is a crowd” is a popular expression. The gospel would have it otherwise. There, the figure three symbolises completeness and perfect symmetry, and re-appears at all the key moments of the Christ story.

            The life of Christ constantly reflected the Trinity. Three figures make up the nativity scene in Bethlehem — the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Their first visitors - wise men, brought three gifts. Later, in the desert preparing to begin his public life, Jesus was tempted three times by the devil. A good story should have a beginning, middle and an end. Christ was a storyteller par excellence and three figures prominently in his parables. The Prodigal Son is about a father and his two sons; the Good Samaritan tells of the three passers-by, the priest, the Levite and the Samaritan; the sower sowed his seed in three kinds of soil, yielding three kinds of harvest.  The crucifixion scene has three figures, Christ between two thieves. Before his resurrection, he spent three days in the tomb.

            God is love. There are Three Persons in the Trinity, the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit. Together they represent the fullness of love. The Father loves the Son, the Son loves the Father. The Holy Spirit is their love for each other. We are made in the image of a triune God. God the Father, who created us, his Son who saved us, and the Holy Spirit who continues to guide us. Our lives should reflect the Trinity. We should be always creative like the Father, compassionate like his Son, and dispose our talents in the service of others like the Holy Spirit…

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A story is told of an activist who complained to God at the end of a long day: “God, you don’t care about us! Why do you allow all these: war, hunger, sickness to happen? Why are you not doing anything?” god looked at him with tenderness and love and said: “I did something, my son. I created you!”

Life has taught me that there are only two hard, incontrovertible facts; there is a God, and, I’m not Him.

Praying is something we do in our time, the answers come in God’s time.