Mary Did You Know

Written by Buddy Greene and Mark Lowry

Mary, did you know
That your baby boy will one day walk on water?
Did you know
That your baby boy will save our sons and daughters?
Did you know
That your baby boy has come to make you new?
This child that you’ve delivered
Will soon deliver you

Mary, did you know
That your baby boy will give sight to a blind man?
Did you know
That your baby boy will calm a storm with his hand?
Did you know
That your baby boy has walked where angels trod?
And when you kiss your little boy
You’ve kissed the face of god

Mary, did you know?
The blind will see
The deaf will hear
And the dead will live again
The lame will leap
The dumb will speak
The praises of the lamb

Mary, did you know
That your baby boy is lord of all creation?
Did you know
That your baby boy will one day rules the nations?
Did you know
That your baby boy is heavens perfect lamb?
This sleeping child you’re holding
Is the great I am


It may seem like insanity to put a song that many regard as a Christmas song in my blog at the end of hot June. But when you see the rest of today's entry you should understand.

There is a line in a song from the play Les Miserables that says, “To love another person is to see the face of God.” The “Face of Christ” is the innocence and love behind our masks we all wear, and seeing that face, touching it and loving it in ourselves and others, is the experience of God. It is our divine humanness. It is the high we all seek.
A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles, p. 91-92.

This is the doctrine of vocation. God works through people, in their ordinary stations of life to which He has called them, to care for His creation. In this way, He cares for everyone- Christian and non-Christian- whom He has given life.
Luther puts it even more strongly- Vocations are the “masks of God.” On the surface, we see an ordinary human face- our mother, the doctor, the teacher, the waitress, our pastor- but, beneath the appearances, God is ministering to us through them. God is hidden in human vocations.
The other side of the coin is that God is hidden in us. When we live out our callings- as spouses, parents, children, employers, employees, citizens, and the rest- God is working through us. Even when we do not realize it, when we fulfill our callings, we too are masks of God.
The purpose of vocation, according to Luther, is to love and serve the neighbor. Thi8s was that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12: 20-31).
~ Gene Edward Veith


This is a portion of the message I sent to my on-line buddy this morning following a rather interesting phone call last night about how we have little in common due to our difference in economic status:

Step out on faith. Expect every person that crosses your path to be a mirror image of God and therefore a mirror image of you because you were made in His image. Love them. Accept them. Place no label on them. See that homeless person as God. See him or her as yourself. See that mentally challenged person as God. See him or her as yourself. In fact throughout the day, pick 3-5 people and do just that. See them as God and as yourself. If you can't, ask that God allow you to see them through His eyes and to hear them through His ears. When you do miracles will occur. But I caution you. What you will receive will blow your mind. You might not be able to handle it at first. Because if the person is in pain, you will feel his or her pain. It is in doing this that you actually become Christ-like. You were right last night when you said that Christ had not lived the same experiences as those around him but he could feel their pain because he saw and heard them through his father's eyes and ears.

I believe that when we are able to do this we are able to truly love unconditionally and to accept people as they are. This is when the miracle of love begins to take hold.

When our layers of definition are stripped away from us we are transformed. We become like Christ. When we reflect this to others we allow them to do the same.

That having been said. Let's start over. Hi, my name is Yolanda. My friends call me Yo. And you are?

This evening I began to feel disconnected again from my power source because my mother kept calling and asking me about stuff I'd rather not talk about. I can not help her. She has three caseworkers and needs to learn to lean on them, not me. I'm doing well to help myself right now. Truth of the matter is I'm "leaning on the everlasting arms." I've surrendered more things to God than I ever have before. I had to because I was literally going insane.

Tonight the power went off for about 2 hours. I sat in the dark with a few candles and a tiny oil lamp burning with a flashlight perched on my shoulder. I began to read Marianne William's Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles again. I saw a lot of the things I've been going through mentioned in the book. I'm growing. I know I am but sometimes I feel like I'm just standing still. I also feel like the odd man out at times. I wish there were someone near by going through similar experiences as me and was willing to talk about them. Then I wouldn't feel so disconnected.

I feel like I literally need the back and forth conversation of someone who is walking the same path as me. Kenny sort of is, but then again...he's not. He's so bogged down in who he is, what he is, that he can't get past his own labels. Here I am throwing out all the things I label myself as. I have held on to only one and I guess it's time to let it go. I will no longer refer to myself as Finnegan Begin Again. It is more fitting for me to merely state I am lovable, capable of loving and loved. That is my new definition of self. As long as I hold onto that I feel better. It's just so dog gone hard to hang onto it.