Soul Sister Time

            I expected God to alert me to miracles in 2015 when He gave me the word Miracle and James 5:13-16 as my year’s verse:   Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise.   Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective . I set out into the year writing down a miracle for each day.   Most were small occurrences—yet something only God could do.               I noted miracles that happened to people I cared about, like a friend I met in India receiving scholarship funds to attend a Christian University, to my dog finding my favorite earring

            It’s the fourth week of Advent.  Our waiting is nearing an end because Christmas will come again as promised on December 25.  The Feast of the Nativity is one of the immovable holidays.  It always occurs on the 25 th Day of December.  Advent prepares our souls for the true celebration of indescribable hope, love, peace and joy!  God became one of us.  He was born through a virgin.  He grew in wisdom and knowledge and in favor with God and man.  He explained the mystery that the prophets, feasts and creation had been seeping out—that God would take on human nature, live, teach, die and rise again to secure the promise made to Abraham.  A mystery revealed that continues to remain too complicated for human minds.             Hebrews 6:13-20 reviews the promise .  God made his promise to Abraham, since there was no one greater for him to swear by, he swore by himself, saying, I will surely bless you and give you many descendants. And so after waiting patiently, Abraham r

            The spiritual life is about patience.  The season of Advent draws us into an attitude of patience.  When enduring patiently, it is helpful that you are not the only one who must wait.  It is even comforting to know that others have waited before and perhaps even longer than you. James 5:10-11 draws our attention to the patience of the prophets who foretold the events God would bring about in the world He created.  Brothers and sisters, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.   As you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. When I take the patience of Isaiah who walked around naked for three years (Isaiah 20:3) as an example, then I don’t feel so bad about the patience God is asking of me.  There is Jeremiah who never married and was cruelly tormented in a pit of excrement (Jeremiah 18).  These same p

            The virtue of patience can only be experienced in the period of waiting.  How will you ever become patient if you are never given the opportunity to wait?             Our Lord is the giver of holy patience.  Patience is not a gift that we beg God to give us.  Most of our prayers are about ending the period of waiting we are currently living.  Only the Giver of Life values the gift of patience, and He does not wait for us to ask to receive.              Advent is a season of exploring the virtue of patience.  It is a brief exercise in recognizing the holy goodness of the wait.  In Advent we are forced to wait four Sundays before we arrive at the joy of Christmas.  The gift of Advent is that when we allow our souls to sink deeply into the joy of waiting, Christmas becomes more fulfilling.  We don’t have to face the reality that a perfect Christmas morning is not created by all the frills, smells and presents that world insists will make us happy.  Rather the meaning of