House of Prayer or Den of Thieves

[Based off a reflection by Carol Zuegner from Creighton University, here is a link

http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/112213.html ]

I was reading a daily reflection today by Carol Zuegner from Creighton University on today’s Gospel from Luke 19:45-48 and one of the key verses she highlighted was Luke 19:46 which states “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.’” Zuegner went on to explain that often times she doesn’t pray as much as she should and often offers to God a “litany of excuses rather than a litany of prayer.” What she said stuck a chord with me because in the past this too has been my own way of working. As a college student it has always been very easy for me to come up with an excuse as to why I can’t pray or attend Mass. I would use anything from “I have to study” to the typical “I’m tired” and my favorite “I’m just so busy,” when in reality those are the very reasons why I should have taken the time to pray.

                Too often we give ourselves excuses as to why we don’t have time to pray or attend Mass, and more often than not these excuses hold no weight in justifying our actions. Yes, life can be stressful and very busy, but that is exactly why we need time every day to take a step away from the busyness and be with God, our creator. For in those times of busyness we can ask God through prayer for guidance or moments of peace, and in those times of high stress we can ask God for strength and patience. This school year has been a very busy one for me, and I admit that in the beginning of this semester my daily prayer life was almost nonexistent. I had adapted a lifestyle of busyness: going to school full time, interning 16 hours a week, devoting much of my time to the Newman Center leading small groups one-on-ones and helping with Confirmation, all the while still trying to spend time with friends and keep up with my favorite TV shows. I was very busy, and my prayer life suffered because of it.

                But, after a few weeks of trying to balance all these things and stressing myself out, I had realized that I was doing myself a disservice by neglecting my prayer life.  Having spent a lot of my time prior to the school year devoted to daily prayer I knew that I was missing out. I was disheartened at the fact that I was no longer praying like I used to and I knew that I had to change my habits. My life that had once been a house of prayer had slowly, but surely become a den of thieves and the main culprits were all the excuses I had given that had stolen my time away from prayer.

                What I have realized now is that it is not our busyness that prevents us from praying it is our priorities. Sure I was busy and had a lot on my plate, but I also found time to watch TV, and I found time to hang out with my friends, and I had the time for social media, so in all reality I had time to pray.  I didn’t pray not because of all the excuses I had given myself, I didn’t pray simply because I didn’t pray. It was my own fault, and only I could change my behaviors, which is what I intended to do.

                A few weeks ago I spent some time with my small group talking about prayer and one of the things we looked at was all the times in the Gospels that Jesus went off by himself to pray. While Jesus was alive here on earth, He spent a lot of his time praying. If you read Mark 1:32-35 you see that after Jesus spent a whole evening driving out demons and curing the sick, Jesus arose very early the next morning and went up on a mountain and prayed. Jesus was constantly taking time out of his ministry to go off on his own in solitude and pray to God the Father. If Jesus who in His own right was very busy leading his disciples, preaching, driving out demons, performing miracles, and healing the sick could find time to pray, then I definitely have no excuse to not pray. Further more if Jesus who himself was God, still thought it important to pray, how much more important must prayer be in my life?

                Since that meeting with my small group, my prayer life has taken a change for the better, and I can tell you that my daily prayer that was almost nonexistent is now very much existent and consistent in my life today. Spending time with God each day in prayer has given me so much peace, and has given me the strength and the energy to tackle my busy life style and keep getting out of bed every morning. My prayer life isn’t perfect and every now and again I find days where I don’t sit down and pray, but I continue to try and keep at it because I know that I need God’s help to keep moving forward in life and tackle the trials that come my way.

                So as I conclude, I challenge all of you to examine your own prayer life and see if you have been living in “a house of prayer or a den of thieves.” Find the things that steal your time away from prayer and see if you can overcome them. Ask God for His grace and His intervention. Realize that God wants you to spend time with Him in prayer and will give you the ability to do so; all you have to do is ask. Work on developing your own prayer schedule and find ways that work for you and allow you to spend time with God every day. Start now, find time today to spend some time alone with God, after all if Jesus took the time to pray in solitude then we should probably follow his example.  1 Thessalonians 5:17 tells us to “Pray without ceasing” I guess we better start now, after all there’s no time like the present. :)

Genesis 1 Talk

[Here is another talk that I gave at Newman's Praise and Worship Night from early this year. It's a reflection on Genesis 1:27 and being created in the image of God.]

When I was preparing for this talk and I was reading over Genesis chapter 1 I started thinking about how I would react if God came up to me and said “Reanna you are perfect just as you are, you are so very good, you are exactly what I created you be!” To be honest, I think my first reaction would be to laugh. What I mean is I would probably laugh nervously at this statement and then start to question what exactly God meant by that. You see, I often view myself as unfinished. It’s not that I don’t believe that I am what God created me to be, I just feel like everything I do in life is to help me grow closer to becoming the person God created me to be. So if God came up to me and said “Reanna you are perfect just as you are” naturally I feel like I would want to ask God “Are you sure?” because perfect? That's not me. 

            Genesis 1:27 states “God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” You see all of us were created in the image and likeness of God and this is what sets mankind apart from all the other creatures and things that God created. We are the only beings that God created with the likeness and image of himself. I find this hard to believe because I don't think that I am half as beautiful as the view of sunset on the beach in Hawaii, and I am not nearly as elegant as a Bengal Tiger. It is hard to believe that I was created in the image of God knowing that the way I look is nothing compared to the beauty of these things. Having said this, the real fact of the matter is what I as human hold to be true isn't always what God knows to be true.

            If we go back to the first chapter of Genesis we are told that every time God created something, God observed the world and thought that it was good, but it wasn’t until after God created humans that God looked at the world and thought that it was very good. Learning this has given me some perspective, you see though God did create the sunset and the Bengal Tiger to be beautiful, to God both of these  things are simply good. When God looks at me, his opinion changes, I’m not just good, I am very good. I think it is interesting how I can look at the sunset or a Bengal Tiger and admire the beauty of both these things, but yet often times when I look in the mirror I don’t see the beauty that God created within me, a beauty that was created in His image, a beauty that God sees is very good.

        Often times, when I look in the mirror, I see my flaws, when I look in the mirror I see my insecurities and things I wish I could change about myself. I focus on how I would be better off if I weighed less, I think about how different my life would be if only I were a few inches taller, somehow my eyes always close in on the yellowness of my teeth and the marks on my face that like to come and go as they please. When I look in the mirror this is what I see, I see all of these imperfections, when I look in the mirror I don't see the beauty that God created within me.

        And if you think about it, who could blame me? We live in a world that is constantly telling us that we aren't good enough. We can't go anywhere without some kind of reminder about the changes we need to make in our lives in order to be beautiful, in order to be accepted. Turn on a tv and you can find literally hundreds of commercials which encourage you to buy the next big thing so that you can look better. We learn from an early age that in order to be accepted we have to have the coolest clothes, and the best hair. We spend hundreds of dollars on products each year that alter our appearance. And why do we do these things? We do it because deep down inside of all of us, is a need and a longing to be loved and accepted. Deep down inside we long to hear that we are beautiful, that we are good, and that we are perfect just the way that we are.

        There is only one being in the entire universe that is beautiful, good, and perfect just the way that they are, and that's God. The world can tell us that we aren't beautiful, we aren't good, and we aren't perfect, but Scripture tells us that we are created in the image and likeness of God. This means that when God created us, he did something special, when God created us, he put glimpses of himself into our being. Therefore we are perfect by association, we are perfect because God made us in his likeness and God is perfect. We are good, because God is good and we are beautiful because God is beautiful. God does not look at us with the same perceptions of the world, when God looks at us he does not see any imperfections, rather God sees the beautiful beings that remind him of himself. God looks at us and sees something that isn't just good, God sees something that is very good.

        The problem that we face today is that the world has conformed us to be different from the true version of ourself, we grow to become people that are different from what God created us to be. We forget to love ourselves and others just as God has loved us, we sin, and we take the blessings that God gives us for granted. All of these things have the ability to change our opinions and our perceptions of ourselves, but they can never change God's perception and opinion of us. I look in the mirror and I see my imperfections, my failures, and my sins, but when God looks at me God looks past all of these things, and God focuses on the true me. God looks at me and he sees the Reanna that he created in his image, God sees the person he created me to be, rather than the person the world has made me to be. Knowing this makes me want to be better, to do better and live better and I think as disciples this is what we are called to do, I believe that we are called be the versions of ourselves that God created in his image. God calls us to live in the world without being of the world. God calls us to be the versions of ourselves that he created rather than to conform and be what the world tells us to be.

        I've learned that I do not need to look to the world for approval and acceptance. I do not need the world to tell me that I am beautiful. I don't need any of it, because in the end the only approval I ever needed was God's. It is from God that we get our dignity and worth, this is the grace that he gave to us since the very beginning. When God created us with the likeness and image of himself, God set us all apart from any other creature in the universe. God has loved us from the very beginning, he has always thought that we are beautiful, and he always will. When God looks at us he sees beauty in it's truest and purest form. We don't have to do anything to get this approval from God, he gave it us in our creation.

        So the next time you look in the mirror, remember that you are beautiful. Remember that you were created in the image and likeness of God. Remember that when God looks at you he sees something that is very good.

Trusting God with the Future

[This is from a talk I gave at Newman's Praise and Worship Night about trusting God when it comes to the future. Hope you enjoy!]
            I don’t know if you guys know this, but I am going to be graduating in May which is a pretty scary thought. On one hand I am very excited to start a new chapter in my life, and on the other hand I’m a little nervous about what happens next. It seems like the million dollar question for me these days is “Reanna what are you going to do after you graduate?” and if I am being honest as of right now I can confidently tell you that I have no idea, that said, I know that eventually I will be able to figure it out.

            There are several different directions my life can take after I graduate. I can stay in San Diego and attend graduate school for social work. I could move back home and try and find work. I could try and stay here and find work. I can go for a masters in theology and work as a Campus Minister. I could take a year off of school and do missionary work, basically the possibilities are endless, and so when it comes to looking at the future you could say I have a lot of options, which in many ways can be a blessing and also a curse.

Tonight I want to talk about how it feels to be graduating and what it looks like for me to work with God when it comes to looking towards the future. So raise your hand if you have heard the phrase “God has a plan for you!” okay, thank you. Now raise your hand if you ever questioned a decision you had to make because you weren’t sure if what you decided was in line with God’s plan for you? If you raised your hand, I want you to know that you aren’t alone. I feel that way too sometimes, but lately I have learned to look at things a little differently and that’s what I want to talk to you about tonight.

            You see a lot of times we have this idea that God has a plan for us and that we are supposed to live our lives to fulfill some kind of purpose in order to live out God’s will for us. I used to think that God had already written out my life story, and whatever I did in life was to fulfill the next phase of my life written out in God’s book. I felt like whatever I did in life was predestined for me to do from the very beginning. Like coming to school here at SDSU, I used to think that it was God’s plan for me all along to attend state, but now I’m not so sure. You see, I don’t believe that God has this magical formula for how we are supposed to live our lives, there isn’t a timeline for how we are supposed to live or a map that we are supposed to follow which shows us which direction to turn to in life. I’m learning that we don’t have to worry about what comes next, we don’t have to worry that a decision we make regarding our future will wreck God’s plan for us or place us off course. Instead I am learning that ultimately when it comes to thinking about the future we don’t have to focus on God’s plan, but more importantly we should focus on our relationship with God.

            I’ve realized that living life isn’t about following the plans that God has for us; rather it’s about taking God with you to wherever life take’s us or finding God in every destination that life take’s us. For example, I used to think that I was predestined to attend SDSU and it was a part of God’s plan for me. The reason being is that it was here at Newman that my faith really became alive and it was here that I felt God’s call to discipleship and entered into a deeper relationship with Christ, but the more I think about it the more I realize that this isn’t necessarily true. The truth is I believe that God would have called me and helped me to discover my faith even if I didn’t decide to go to State. I believe that God would have met me and called me in any circumstance. If I chose to go to a different school, I believe that God would have met me there and I would have been called to be a disciple no matter where I ended up in life.

            I believe that we are not destined to go in one direction in life or another, but rather God gives us the freedom to live out our lives and follow any direction that life takes us. The important thing is to focus not on where you end up in life, but rather WHO is going to be with you when you get there? Will it be God? So when it comes to looking at my options about the future, I’ve realized that I don’t have to worry about choosing the wrong direction. Instead I need to work with God to choose a direction in life where I can live out my faith and trust that God will be with me no matter where life takes me.

            Right now I’m working on making plans with God rather than following the so called plans that God has for my life. This starts with being open with God and sharing my true desires and dreams that I hold in my heart, all the while trusting that God will meet me where I am in the midst of all those dreams and desires. For the longest time I worried that the hopes and desires I had for myself would not match up with God’s plans for my life. I was always too scared to ask God for help with attaining the desires I hold so dear, because I never felt I had a right to even ask. I thought that by asking for something it meant that I didn’t appreciate the life and the blessings God had already given me.

            For so long I ignored my own desire and dream to one day be a wife and have kids. I used to tell myself, that if God didn’t want to me to be wife and have kids that would be enough. I never wanted to pray and ask God for these things, because I was afraid that I would be asking God for too much. In a lot of ways I felt like I had to accept that being a wife and mom might not be in the cards for me; because it just didn’t make sense. I never felt like I was pretty enough, or good enough to find someone who could love me for me and want to share their life with me. I would look at my friends and have no doubts that they would find that perfect guy, but when it came to me I wasn’t so sure. I was never open to God about these desires, because I never wanted to admit that I felt this way, and I simply accepted that I would most likely never get married. It was that whole idea of if you accept the worse, then you won’t be let down or disappointed, and if you end up out on top, then you will be happy regardless.

            But, the more I grow as a person and work on my relationship with God the more I know that I do not have to think this way. I have realized that I am good enough and I am loved by the One who loves us all, so I have no reason to be afraid or feel unworthy.  What I am working on right now is not only being open with God about my desires, but also not being afraid to boldly ask God for the desires and hopes that I hold in my heart.

The bible is full of so many people who were not afraid to boldly ask God for help with what many considered to be impossible. Abraham was already of old age and had a wife, Sarah who was considered barren but he still asked God for a son. He asked and asked God for a son for years, and when Abraham was 100 years old his son Isaac was born. The Gospels are full of people who asked Jesus to perform miracles. There was the blind beggar who asked Jesus to see, or the hemorrhaging woman who sought out Jesus for healing, and a paralytic whose friends lowered him down through a roof so that Jesus could help him walk. The bible is full of stories much like those in which God performed the impossible all because people asked boldly for God’s intervention.

            At the same time, God is not stingy when it comes giving us the very desires and hopes that we want. He gives us much more than we ever asked for. Abraham asked God for a son, but the Lord gave him much more than that the Lord gave Abraham descendants as numerous as the stars. When God gives us life we are given it abundantly. Jesus tells us in John 10:10b “I came that you might have life and have it more abundantly” so rest assured that our God is generous and will be generous in answering our prayers.

            Knowing this and seeing how unafraid these people were to ask God for these things shows me that I too can ask God boldly for the desires and dreams I have in my life. I can ask God for a husband and kids, and I can dream big dreams with God when it comes to looking at the future. Looking at my options after I graduate, I’ve realized that I don’t need to play it safe. I can aspire for great things and aim for the moon and the stars like Abraham if I wanted to, and if I never get there that’s ok. You see where you end up in life is not important, but what’s important is who you have at your side. I have no reason to fear the future because I have faith that God will be with me wherever I go in life. Deuteronomy 31:8 says “It is the LORD who goes before you; he will be with you and never fail you or forsake you. So do not fear or be dismayed.” Knowing I have God on my side is all I need when it comes to looking towards the future.

            When it comes to what happens next, nothing is for certain. I know that life is full of ups and downs, and it is possible that I can choose a direction to go in life that may not be what was best for me, but in the end with God on my side I know I will be just fine. So looking at life after graduation I’ve realized that I have no reason to fear, I simply have to trust in God and have faith that He will be with no matter where life takes me. It’s possible that the dreams and the desires we hold in our hearts, will not come true. Sometimes, the things we ask God for might not make us happy or be in our best interests, but never the less we must trust in God and realize that no matter where life takes us He is at our side. God always has our best interests at heart and often uses situations in our lives to help us grow and be fruitful. Often times planning for the future and working with God can be stressful, but that stress shouldn’t stop us from living out our lives and trying to move forward. Even through times of stress and uncertainty, we can rest assured that our God is faithful and will never fail us or abandon us, so we have no reason to fear or grow weary.

            If you take away anything from tonight, I want you take away the idea that you don’t have to worry about choosing a direction in life that might not coincide with God’s so called plan for your life. Instead it is more important to work with God in order to plan for the future, because we will get nowhere if we try it on our own. Mark 10:27 says “For human beings it is impossible, but not for God, all things are possible for God.” Tonight, I challenge you to trust in God, and learn to let go and be honest about the dreams and desires that you have in your life, be comforted by the fact that God wants to meet you in the midst of all those dreams and desires and work with you to make those dreams a reality. Remember that all things are possible for God, so even if what you are asking feels like it is too much; know that nothing is too much for God to handle. In John 14:14 Jesus tells us “If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.” So don’t be afraid of the desires and hopes that you hold in your heart, chances are that they too are the desires and hopes that God gave to you. If this is true then ask God boldly for those things and He might just give you what you have been hoping for.