This past week, my wife and I visited the town where I spent my childhood. When we go back, life is a time warp. We see old friends, old places, old things. The space between childhood and adulthood shrinks. Everything that was known then, we so easily assume, is somehow still true after all these years. It may feel as though nothing changes, but, really, everything is different. God’s creative hand has been hard at work.
Imagine: Jesus comes home. They don’t know where he’s been, who he’s learned from, the God he’s encountered. Yet, in the eyes of home, he is the same. Nothing changes, or so they think.
As you reflect today, identify one person in your life for whom the mental image you hold is stagnant. Pray for new eyes to see them as a vehicle for God’s grace – someone who God is working on and working through.
—Mark Bartholet serves with the Jesuits as Pastoral Associate for Faith Formation at St. Peter Catholic Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. He lives there with his wife, their magical cat and high strung dog.