**One Spirit, One Flesh**

Good morning and may God bless you, I pray that your sleep was good and that His spirit infilled you with your first wakened breath. This morning I share with you the link for today's mass readings and a reflection by Oswald Chambers. They are not written for each other but in a way it seems the good Lord has put them together for today. The readings have to do with our connectedness with God and how He has brought us through much and our connectedness with each other, namely, marriage between one man and one woman. I would ask you to please take note of Jesus' response to being questioned about divorce. How He politely refers back to how things were set up in the beginning, that man and woman would merge and become one flesh (and God is the glue). Please also notice that Jesus makes it plain that some are able to accept marriage and some are not because they are born that way, made that way through others and some that have renounced marriage for the sake of the Kingdom of God. Jesus does not spell it out but to me He is stating that we are not all made the same. But, for those that are joined in marriage there are blessings to cover the joining of man and woman (please look to the commentary "They are not two but one flesh") at the end of the page of the gospel, it is a blessing to be said over a couple at the altar. A marriage blessing.
I would encourage those of you that are married to print out that blessing and just before hitting the print button, place your name and your spouse's name inside of the blessing and put it up somewhere that both of you can look at it each day. Maybe once a week stand together and recite the blessing to each other and speak out your names to each other. It is a way to reconnect spiritually with each other and with God in the joining of the one flesh.

In the reflection of Oswald Chambers he reminds us much like the first reading that God has brought His people through great and impossible things. He has chased out enemies of His chosen people using nature's creatures and performed mighty deeds in separating large bodies of water many times to put obstacles between His chosen people and their enemies. God has taken from those He has not called and given blessings to those He has called. Some may stop and think this is unfair to the other people, that they deserve a place to live also. Well, to that I can tell you this, He is the creator of all things therefore He is the owner and provider of all things and He is the judge of who gets what. If it is God's decision to revoke blessings given to people who now spit upon His Holy Name and who war against His holy people, His chosen ones then sorry but He is not like the Obama Administration, He will not fund the "other side" and allow them to rule unjustly over His chosen people. If they want to make war on His Holy People then they can do it on their own land with their own food and their own houses....oh...wait....they never created anything for themselves because in order to do that they would have first had to make the Dirt that from that dirt was formed all matter of living things on the earth. Sounds like ownership trumps being fair, God is fair, if they can make their own stuff then they can have at it and they can spit on His name "from over there" but if they cannot create life on their own, make a their own planet to live on...oh....wait...that would require having their own solar system too....oh boy this stuff is getting complicated and complex. Well, we will leave it there.

Oswald makes a point that for those who do trust in God and His mighty works in their own particular lives, those who without a doubt can point to a significant time when all seemed lost but almost overnight the tide turned and they give all credit to Almighty God, for them they have a reason to believe in God's ability to move mountains. The mountains in our lives and the mountains that seem to block our way of life. Oswald states that those who draw from their confidence in God through easy times will also draw from the same well of confidence during the most stressful times and it is then that others will seek them out because of their steadfast confident composure. Allow that steadfastness to make a home in you today. May your calmness of spirit be evident for others that do not seek the supplier of confidence. We can have times of worry too but as believers we do not let worry overtake us every hour of the day, we choose to remain before Him and trust that as He has done mighty and glorious things in the past, so shall He do more great things to come.

Peace to you.

Lou

August 12th.
	THE THEOLOGY OF REST
"Why are ye fearful, 0 ye of little faith?" Matthew 8:26 When we are in fear we can do nothing less than pray to God, but Our Lord has a right to expect that those who name His Name should have an understanding confidence in Him. God expects His children to be so confident in Him that in any crisis they are the reliable ones. Our trust is in God up to a certain point, then we go back to the elementary panic prayers of those who do not know God. We get to our wits' end, showing that we have not the slightest confidence in Him and His government of the world; He seems to be asleep, and we see nothing but breakers ahead. "0 ye of little faith!" What a pang must have shot through the disciples - 'Missed it again!' And what a pang will go through us when we suddenly realize that we might have produced down right joy in the heart of Jesus by remaining absolutely confident in Him, no matter what was ahead. There are stages in life when there is no storm, no crisis, when we do our human best; it is when a crisis arises that we instantly reveal upon whom we rely. If we have been learning to worship God and to trust Him, the crisis will reveal that we will go to the breaking point and not break in our confidence in Him. We have been talking a great deal about sanctification - what is it all going to amount to? It should work out into rest in God which means oneness with God, a oneness which will make us not only blameless in His sight, but a deep joy to Him.

Daily Mass readings: http://www.dailygospel.org/main.php?language=AM&module=readings&localdate=20110812

 

May you have a Jesus filled day