This morning I was going to remind you of your warm hearth from yesterday (see day two) and how to create warmth to share with someone else today.
My plan was to deliver a fresh package of coffee to a local shelter and possibly go have a cup of coffee with my 93 year old grandmother at the nursing home. Just simple plans.
Plans never go as planned...even simple ones.
One of the grandboys was sick and so over to MayMay's house he came. That pushed my morning plans into the afternoon and canceled out my afternoon plans which were all self-obligatory anyway.
Instead, of sharing the warmth of my hearth outside my home, it meant keeping myself-inside-of-itself. Kind of a complicated notion, I suspect.
But that's right where God wanted me.
A good many of us fight God.
Why? Why? When it makes things so much harder on everyone, ourselves included.
I fixed warm sugar-cinnamon toast for the 15 month old, rocked him, cooled a feverish brow, and set-up a cozy play area on the floor for him.
Then Oma arrived in time for coffee with a box of cocoa mix in her hands.
Have I mentioned how a hot cup of coffee, tea, or cocoa is welcome and soothing to a person coming in from the cold. It reaches a spiritual part of us as well as a physical part. And that's because as we are wholly physical, we are also wholly spiritual. We cannot separate the two. We are only complete as physical and spiritual beings.
And God speaks to us...to our soul...through our senses.
How else would He communicate with us?
And I realized that I don't need to move very far from my home and hearth in order to spread warmth. In fact, the less I drift away from it, the warmer it will be. When one's parents are 70 and 83 years old and can still come over for coffee, that's a pretty rare thing. My mother can still sit and rock the baby so I can do a few needed things at home. She can still make a pot of coffee or warm up fresh cocoa for us to enjoy after I've tended a diaper change.
We're made to believe that we have to do something major and huge this time of year, or at least something different and, yes, we are called outside of ourselves. Pope Francis has made this quite clear.
But the fresh package of coffee will still get delivered to the local shelter and I cannot rain too much guilt on not making that nursing home visit. A Christmas visit will get made but my grandmother does not know if I came or not or what day is tomorrow.
Then again, I think, because God knows, maybe she does know. Not literally right now but let me explain...
One day she will know that, when her soul departs this earth she will know the fullness of her work and my work in this world. I know that her soul, if she knew this very minute, would be warmed knowing her daughter and granddaughter tended to her great-great grandson side-by-side.
If we truly, honestly, knowingly believe we are spiritual beings as well as physical beings, we will know what important work we are doing no matter where God plants us.
It's faith that allows us to keep spreading warmth even when we do not see the source.
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