While repotting plants for the March Garden Club sale, I fall back on my heels and I think of what I have to do this week: find a substitute lector because we are going on a trip for Thanksgiving and on another trip to a cousin’s wedding, confirm a dinner date, make an appointment with a doctor, refill a prescription. This is a normal list of things to do. If you are like me, and you make lists, they might resemble mine. So: what’s on your list?
I’ll bet what’s not on your list is: forage for food and milk for the baby, find water for the family, wash and bandage filthy, infected wounds, find missing and possibly tortured family, find a way out of the hell of your country in a vicious war, avoid falling bombs and swinging machetes. These are tough times. Our government-issued danger list is colored bright orange moving toward red. Terrorism is a word close to people’s tongues. We worry what will happen in our neighborhoods and on our college campuses. I crouch now; my face is bent to the ground under the weight of the dead and mutilated in Israel, Palestine, and Africa … Dead children and men, mutilated mothers, missing family… and I wail once again: “Lord! God! Creator-Father, … Enough!” God answers, and yes, God answers, even though we hardly hear him; “I am here. Look up. See? Wait.” I look up. I shake my head. “Are you sure, God? What about the people stumbling around in bloody rubble? Mothers. Babies. What about the mutilations? This isn’t barbaric times, Lord. This is 2023!” “It isn’t your time,” He answers, “It is my Father’s time. It is the Creator’s time.” I thank God I have been taught about faith. I thank God our priest prays so faithfully for us, every day. Otherwise what would this Creator-Father look like but some mean one-eyed monster. Many believe that he doesn’t see or care. Many don’t believe in our Father-God. They wave bundles of sage to clear the air and chant mystic mumbled words in strange languages. Jesus reminds me, “Pray for the unbelievers. Bring them home. Go out and get them; you do the work. Pray. Wait. Don’t you know that the souls of the just are in the hands of God? Don’t you know that I will raise you up on the last day?” “Yes.” I say. “Yes.”