With all things in life, most people try to belong to something. We belong to our families–that’s a given–hopefully. We belong to our places of employment and the people we work with. We belong to our church. We belong to different organizations. We belong to the planet at large. We carve out a place or a niche to belong to but how does this happen? Most likely, we are showing up day after day.
I find it interesting as we go through life how things change–jobs change or we retire, people move, kids grow up, and more often than not, many of the relationships that are built upon the places or niche we inhabit dwindle or vanish. As humans, our time on Earth is finite and most times is limited to working, caring for family and maintaining a household so maintaining relationships is not always at the top of the list. Thank gosh for Facebook, eh? Then you can keep up with your friends’ latest vacation and what they ate for dinner that night. Frankly, I like to know these things and even though it’s passed on through a digital medium it is a way of sharing what is human about us as individuals. Humans are made for relationship and connections can be made this way.
One relationship that remains constant is the one we have with God. At times, we either grow closer in relationship to him or more distant, or sometimes it is non-existent on our part, the choice is ours to make. He is always there like a backdrop to a painting, accepting all the lines and dabs of color we paint in life. At times, the painting can be quite colorful, at other times it may be dark and brooding. We must remember that whatever hue, light or dark, that we subject ourselves to, He, in turn, is subjected.
Sometimes we get paint on each other. If we are in relationship with our surrounding family, community, etc. it is only understandable that our paint will mix and often times create new colors. The experiences in our lives color us. We are affected by the many and varied experiences that go into our masterpiece. If it’s a paint we don’t like or want we can wash it off or paint over it. One way to get a white wash is through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. I could probably go on and on with analogies.
We can create a masterpiece or a dud with the life choices we make and the experiences we hold, but He is there to accept it all–Jesus, the spotless Lamb of God. Jesus makes all things new, every day, every hour, every minute! If one lacks hope, one just needs to find fresh paint to apply to the brush.
