"Be alive! God is always in our hearts."
Laura DeMaria
This evening was L’Arche Greater Washington, DC’s monthly prayer night. It was - probably our fourth, maybe fifth? Instance of getting together virtually to pray since this all began. The format is always a few words from Executive Director Luke Smith, a lot of song, and time for reflection guided by prompts or questions. We end with everyone’s prayers, and the Our Father recited together. Many voices across a wide geography, lifting up to God together.
This evening I learned of this this wonderful song: Never Would Have Made It, by Marvin Sapp.
During reflection time, Luke proposed four questions:
How are you remaining hopeful?
What are you choosing to live?
How are you using the gifts God has given you?
What opportunities are we grasping for the work of humanity and justice?
Well - what do you think?
I made many notes to myself. One I will share: that taking care of oneself is hopeful. Isn’t it? It implies there is something worth living for; that one will survive to live that reality which one is working toward. Have you ever thought of that? To brush one’s teeth and take one’s vitamins is hopeful. Maybe not heroic, but evidently there are some seasons where God is not calling us to be heroes, but to just be. This is that season. In the silence and aloneness, which one must accept now, have fidelity - to the relationship with God, and with oneself. Go on, go forward, each day, and if your hope lasts for one day and must be rekindled the next, then so be it. Keep going.
At the end, Laurie spoke up with a word. “Be yourself, follow your heart,” she told us. “He is always with us, in our hearts.”
She wasn’t done: “Be alive! God is always in our hearts!”
Five months of lockdown and the current state of things is, at best, trying. It is a hamster wheel. It is the fear and uncertainty of where this is all leading, and where we will end up. And yet: God is with us - He is in our hearts. Thank you, Laurie, for the reminder, which could not have been more clear or more needed than now. That was the Holy Spirit moving, as He has through all of this. Even - perhaps especially - when we feel we cannot see Him.