So this has been a busy season for me. I haven’t written a post in over 2 months. In fact, even in the months prior I had often been reposting older ones from three years ago. There are a number of reasons I took a hiatus. One is that my son plays on a travel baseball team. If you have kids who play travel sports, you know what I mean. You plan week to week, and when you’re a procrastinator like me, you often run out of time.
But that’s not really the reason why.
I’m gonna be honest. When I hear people say they’re too busy for this and that, I get annoyed. We’re all busy. I hate that excuse. We always have time for the stuff we want to do. We always have time for the stuff we’re passionate about. I had lost my passion. My heart wasn’t in it. It felt like a job. I had lost my reason ‘why’… I always have the time for the stuff I want to do and for a long time I did not want to write. And perhaps it showed in my writings.
And that wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair for you. It wasn’t fair for me. And it wasn’t fair for God.
And so, I took some time off. Time off to let the summer go by, and enjoy time with my family, time in the beautiful region of America that is the Great Lakes, and time to watch my son play the sport he and I both love.
But then I got an email. An email from a friend asking if I was OK and why I was not writing anymore. He said he ‘hoped the Holy Spirit would move me to write again…’
What he didn’t know was that the Spirit was moving me, and that He was working through him.
It was then I asked myself – ‘why am I not writing?’ I lost sight of why I was doing it. Perhaps for the first time, I realized why I need to do it.
Simply put, I need to write because God gave me the gift. And I need to glorify God. I never understood that before, and I may have even rolled my eyes when I heard people say it. Yeah, I know, I need to glorify God. I never really understood what that meant.
At first, writing was an outlet. An outlet for my thoughts and feelings, and to express my passion for Jesus and His presence in my life. Then after a while, it was more about you, the readers. I would think to myself, what could I write to inspire you, to bring you closer to Christ.
But then I dried up. I hit a spiritual dryness of which I am still in. Not that I have lost faith or trust in Christ, but quite the contrary. I have a greater faith in Him and our Church than ever before. But I lost that warm feeling, that passion, that excitement. Perhaps this is my dark night.
I didn’t know why I was writing, and so I took a break. And then my friend posed the question – why are you not writing? Which then made me ask myself, why do I write?
I need to write for God. For Jesus. Because He gave me the gift, and it is an honor to use my gift and be the instrument He needs me to be.
You may be asking, what does this have to do with today’s readings? Well, in short, I was putting the world before Christ. I was putting those earthly things before God, and while in and of themselves they are good(mostly), together, mixed with a little bit of pride, I was putting things before Christ. Not material things per se, but I was simply putting ‘my time’, ‘my gift’, ‘my family’, ‘my job’ before God. The thing is, it’s all His.
I was loving God a little less than everything else. This speaks to the Gospel from this past Sunday, but also speaks to today where St. Paul says we need to put aside everything else that becomes idolatry and put on the new self, in the image of our Creator.
Christ is all and in all. Christ gave me the gift to write – to write for this website and to write for all of you, and it is for Him that I write – plain and simple. It is for Him that we do anything that is good and honorable and true.
It is for Him that we put others first and ourselves last as the Beatitudes suggest, and it is for Him that we live our lives. If we all would just think for a split second before we do anything, and simply ask ‘Am I doing this for God?’, how much different would the world be? And is this something that Jesus would do?
So there it is. I realized that every time I write about Gods Word, I feel His Spirit in me. In a world of uncertainty and fear, I feel I am doing exactly what He wants me to do. I am certain. And so here I am. Writing for Him. For perhaps the first time in my life. And I am unbelievably grateful. And humbled.
And I hope and pray that I can continue to be moved by His Spirit and be His instrument for all of you.
And perhaps as a result, you’ll love Jesus just a little more than everything else in your life, and put away your old self, and put on the new.
