As we begin this New Year, we are invited to make room in our hearts for our Lord and Savior, the Christ Child. Let us look at the world with new eyes, eyes that see the many blessings God has bestowed on us. It is so easy to yearn for what we don’t have and wish for our lives to be different., to be better than they are. It is easy to wonder why God has not blessed us as he has others around us? Is it possible that God offers no blessings to His own children, or is it more a matter of how we do (or don’t) see God, or how we see our own lives? Are we focused on our deficits, the deficits of others, and the pain we have experienced in life? How does our focusing on those perceived deficits interfere with our ability to see and relate to God? Might we sometimes be the cause of our own separation from God?
I wonder what would happen if we could shift how we see things for even a few minutes a day, so we consider those things in our life God has blessed us with? What blessings has God placed in our lives? Is this a bit of a which came first, the chicken or the egg situation? If we continue to become closer to God, I wonder if we might see blessings we may never have considered before. And conversely, if we begin to look more carefully at the blessings in our lives, might this bring us closer to God?
Blessings need not be earth shattering events. A blessing may be a smile from a stranger as we pass them on the street, a friendly person behind a counter at a store, a family member, or a friend who calls us on the phone. And for some of us, it may even be God’s whispering softly in our hearts. Sadly, our complaining, self-pity, and pain can drown out that gentle whisper and cause us to totally miss God in our lives. All that is not from God overtakes anything that is if we allow ourselves to immerse ourselves in our areas of pain and sorrow. With all of those things taking up residence in our hearts, there is barely any room for God to have even a tiny space.
My prayer is that in 2023, we can male room in our our hearts to experience the Love and Joy that the Christ Child brings to us. May we all prepare ourselves to see Him in our lives and to hear His loving whisper in our hearts. —- Martha Corkery