Tired of Struggling on Your Own? Reconciliation Lends More Than Just a Hand
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As I sit by my bedroom window, contemplating the subtle yet dramatic change of the season – as the autumnal hues make way for the starkness of winter, I am taken about how God uses nature for his purposes.
Whether it is wafers of sap or migrating quail or breaking loose limestone finding seeping water or blow-out tides or various plagues or even the creation of the universe itself, God uses his creation for his purposes.
The miracle, of course, is in the perfect timing of the use of nature. God uses nature for his purposes. That means that God must use OUR nature for his purposes. What is our nature? Our feelings, our responses to others, our personalities, our senses of humor, our temperaments.
As we know, human nature is sinful, and, at the same time, within our human nature is an innate desire for holiness.
Perhaps God uses our nature to display His will when we are seen following it. Perhaps God uses our nature to display His forgiveness when our nature leads us to sin. Perhaps God uses our nature to display His love for us when He keeps working with us despite our sinful nature much like He did with Abraham who didn’t trust God enough when he was told he would have a child with his wife, so Abraham had a child with his wife’s servant just in case.
Consider our tempers. We can get angry. We cannot help it. We cannot necessarily stop what we feel; however, we can, with God’s help, control how we act when feelings are aroused. Just because I am not yelling when I’m angry doesn’t mean I am suppressing my emotion, it means I am controlling it – but not on my own. When I try to do that, I end up yelling. I can maintain control with God’s help.
A quick prayer before any emotional response can help us all let God use our nature for his purpose.
Dean P. Johnson is in the Diaconate Candidacy Program for the Diocese of Camden and is a member of Mary Mother of Mercy Parish, both in New Jersey. He holds a BA in English and an MA in Writing both from Rowan University. He has had essays published in newspapers across the country including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Examiner, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Houston Chronicle, Newark (NJ) Star-Ledger, Courier Post (Southern NJ), and Philadelphia Inquirer among many others. He also has had creative nonfiction, short stories and poetry appear in several literary magazines including Chronogram, Foundling Review, JMWW Journal, ArtWord Quarterly, Wolf Head Quarterly, Sylvia, Circle Magazine and The Fourth River among several others.
His first novel, MOONDREAMS, and two collections of essays, CONFESSIONS OF A FRUITCAKE CONVERT and THEY DON’T CALL IT A NUMBER TWO FOR NOTHING, are available as ebooks on Kindle. His poetry chapbook, Pyramids in Nature, is currently out of print.
Dean also has pieces in several books including The Pressures of Teaching (Kaplan), Viewpoints (Wadsworth), and Writing the Critical Essay: Smoking (Greenhaven).
Dean P. Johnson is an administrator and teacher of English at Camden Academy Charter High School in Camden, NJ and is an adjunct professor of writing at Rowan University and Camden County College. Dean lives in New Jersey with his wife of 25 years and their five children along with a Basset hound and cat all of whom provide an endless parade of writing material.
Read more at
http://catholicstarherald.org/putting-the-saints-to-work-on-a-regular-basis
