My reflection this morning for Week 51 was quite significant for me, with God giving me food for thought.
- When his master heard the story his wife told him, saying, “This is how your slave treated me,” he burned with anger. Joseph’s master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined. It would seem that all his efforts to look after his master’s interests, and God’s efforts to bless Potiphar, counted for nothing. There was no sudden revelation or intervention on Joseph’s behalf. How would you have felt if you were in Joseph’s shoes at this point?
First, being sold as a slave (rather than left in a pit to die), now, imprisoned (rather than executed) — there are mitigating factors. Joseph was being kept alive somehow. I’m sure that I would have been bitter and asking why God is silent and indifferent but perhaps much later I would see his hand involved.
I suppose it echoes my own situation, the frustrations over what I see and how I feel; I cannot see God’s hand because I can only see one way to remedy the situation. I can sense possibilities but since events are still unfolding there is no way I can understand what is going on. But God can see the bigger picture!
I received a text from an old friend just before this devotion time that echoes what I just wrote above:
Immanuel; God with us; Finding God in All Things. I am deeply grateful that all members of our family loves The Lord including the young children by faith through covenant of grace. In 1970, l was the first believer in three generations and 54 years later, there are believers from 5 generations 😍 God is able to do far far more than than we can ever think 🤔 or imagine 🤔 (Eph 3:20)
He went on to share with me some thoughts he shared with his family during his family retreat:
We think of God as big so we look for God in the big—miracles, peak moments, spectacular displays. Ignatian spirituality also finds God in the moments of everyday life.
While it seems that God is hidden in the ordinariness of everyday life, Ignatian spirituality helps us to have a sensitivity to God’s presence and God’s grace even in the small matters of life.
We find God in the hard and painful things as well.
If we can find God in all times and spaces, then we can encounter God in prayer in all these places as well.
God can also be found in one another, in the image of the Creator of which we are made—especially in compassion, joy, hope, love and mercy.
When St. Ignatius founded the Society of Jesus, he chose to create an order whose members would work wherever the Church and world most needed them. Ignatius was convinced that God deals directly with us in our experience.
This conviction rested on his profound realization that God works in all things that exist; therefore, our intimate thoughts, feelings, desires, fears, and our responses to the people and things around us are not just the accidental ebb and flow of our inner lives, but rather the privileged moments through which God creates and sustains a unique relationship with each of us.
In finding God in all things, we discover sacred moments in everyday life-grace-filled opportunities to encounter God in nature, our relationships, our academic pursuits, our own stories, and in the stories of those around us.
In these sacred moments, we realize our connectedness to God and how we are called to participate in the transformation of the world in both big ways and small.