I met a really old man the other day. I asked him, "How old are you?"
"Well," he said. "I was alive when the Dead Sea was just a lake that was feeling a little poorly."
I've been writing these articles long enough to notice that some themes are dear to my heart. This article follows two earlier entitled "It's a wonderful life" Part 1 and 2.
There is a risk in repetition, though I do not worry about my readership. "People have an annoying habit of remembering things they shouldn't," Christopher Paolini said. But Churchill said, "History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."
Whether we know it or not, God has given us a key role as His Kingdom unfolds. "Simply by being who you are, you are changing history. Your words, your actions, your demeanor are helping to shape other people and their perception of the Lord. Even your prayers are changing the world" (from The Word Among Us October 2014).
We may have the tendency to dwell on our faults and doubt God's plans for us, the annoying habit of remembering what we shouldn't, but God is writing our history.
Pope Francis in The Joy of the Gospel says, "To believe that the Holy Spirit is at work in everyone means realizing that he seeks to penetrate every human situation and all social bonds." Pope Francis reminds us that "evangelization is cooperating with this liberating work of the Spirit".
Do we realize, every day, the impact our simple words and gestures have on those around us? Do we feel confident as we move through our lives in this body God has given us to serve? And do we know that even when we are at rest the influence we have left with others carries on the wonderful work God intended it to?
In Philip Van Doren Stern's It's a Wonderful Life, George Bailey wishes he had never been born. After this wish comes true he sees a war hero who saves his men and is awarded a medal does not exist because George was not there to save him from drowning in childhood. So the men die.
Another example is George's wife who ends up a spinster librarian. Their wonderful family does not exist. Then there is George's business venture the Building and Loan that is endangered when $8,000 gets misplaced. Well, it's a wonderful story which I don't want to spoil.
George sees how different the world would be if he had never touched the lives of his family, friends and neighbours. And you and I need to let ourselves become the instruments that God created us to be. This will change the world.
St Paul tells us in Ephesians 3: "I pray that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through the Holy Spirit I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and height and depth [and that] God who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish far more than we can ask or imagine"
