Peace to all

I am bumbling along with Vocare, not really in the happy-bee state. I had a less than definitive beginning with the readings not being posted which meant that I strolled off on my own tangent and wound up reading Zachariah on the 22nd, something else before that, missing the week after and hoping to ‘double up’ to catch up this week. I love the 20 minutes. Time gets shorter as you get older. It’s not a long time. It is long enough to properly stop.

To say the past week and half have been calm, relaxed and well managed would be about the biggest lie I could tell. Between getting engaged which is rather a large distraction, and being sick, there has been no remotely conducive environment for study, or stopping.

I’m managing with uni. So well so, that I’m wagging today as I don’t have any class preparation done and am still not fully better. I’ll get more done at home.

I am managing with uni.

My morning began as it should at 6:00am. My alarm went off and I had a huge internal debate as to whether I should go into Prahran or not.

Here is my theory: Wagging uni is like understanding how sin often plays out. It’s a whole lot easier to reason with the, “No I’ll stay home today.”, because it is nicer and it is easier and it is where I am, despite it being better that I do go. My resolve the night before – to just get on with it, was weakened by being in the moment, in the place, in the choice where ‘comfortable’ is already present. Sin is a harder pattern to get out of it you’re lying in it.

I stayed in bed.

This morning I tackled another slot of Vocare. I wanted it. God has only been getting the few minutes before bed recently.

Luke 2:1-20 The Birth of Jesus & The Shepherds and the Angels

Having the luxury of being the only one around, I started reading it out loud. I hit verse 14 and had to stop. “Peace to men on whom his favor rests”(NIV) or “Peace to all men and women on earth who please him.”(MSG)

And further on, “The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told“. God doesn’t muck around, he is clear, he is unchanging, he is truth.

Peace to all men and women on whom his favor rests. No lies.

Part of Vocare is periodical reflection on the Prayer of St Francis. I was sitting there with my Bible in the sun and thinking that maybe there’d be somewhere that the prayer talks about peace – I should remember these things as I’ve had it stuck on my wall for a long time, but I didn’t. So I open the page and there it is,

Lord make me an instrument of your peace.

The first line. Beautifully in my face.

I stopped there. I didn’t need to look at the rest of it. It is a hard thing to live out sharing God’s peace -something I’m still working out – when you’re so caught up in everything else that is going on regardless of whether that means the ‘caught up’ is mostly too big in your head or too big on paper or in action.