In 2024, God invited me to be daring. Once I began the yr, I assumed that the invitation to be daring was about taking audacious steps out of my consolation zone. And in some methods, it was. In spite of everything, being daring led me to say many brave yeses during the last 12 months, together with one to fly to Indonesia within the service of the mission of Jesuit colleges.
However regardless of the wonderful blessings that got here from these daring steps, I found over time that the invitation to be daring was much less about every particular person step out of my consolation zone and extra about God inviting me to do no matter was essential to just accept totally the individual God created me to be. It was about taking the daring probabilities that helped me acknowledge, respect, and develop the distinctive presents God gave me in order that I would supply these presents courageously in service of others. The invitation to be daring woke up in me a deeper love for myself and for God in addition to an insatiable want to go all in to wherever God was inviting me to go.
My residing into this invitation had its drawbacks, although. I discovered myself over the course of the yr saying a daring sure to all the pieces that even tangentially related with my deepest wishes. In reflection over all these daring yeses, I noticed I used to be not exercising the liberty of letting go of the commitments that didn’t match my wishes or the individual God created me to be. The invitation to boldness crammed me with unimaginable pleasure, but it surely additionally left me a little bit disjointed as the top of the yr approached. Regardless of my rising want to go all in, I discovered I used to be nonetheless holding quick to the need for God to make the journey simpler and to wrap up my future in a reasonably little field and place it beneath the tree as the final word prize for all my daring efforts.
That, as you could count on, didn’t occur. So in December, throughout my morning prayer on the best way to work, I requested, not hiding the uncertainty in my voice, “What’s subsequent, God?” The invitation got here virtually instantly. Only one phrase rang out like somebody had spoken it aloud over the din of the visitors outdoors my home windows: “Concord.”
“Wait, what?” I mentioned. “What do you imply by ‘concord’?” God didn’t reply. Unsure I appreciated this invitation, I set it apart for a few weeks earlier than I lastly determined to discover what it would imply. I began by wanting up the definition. After studying by a few definitions about music, the third one mentioned, “concord: the standard of forming a satisfying and constant complete.”
I let these phrases roll round in my head and coronary heart for days. I considered how I felt because the yr was ending. In some features of my life, I felt nice comfort, however in others, I felt fairly the other. I acknowledged that regardless of saying to God time and again, “I’m all in,” I used to be not but exercising the liberty to take action. Praying with this invitation to type “a satisfying and constant complete,” I felt God acknowledging the challenges I introduced up of exercising true freedom, particularly as somebody with a household to contemplate. I additionally felt God’s immense endurance with me as I wrestled with accepting this specific invitation. Nonetheless, God remained persistent in inviting me to concord as a chance to extend regularly within the freedom essential earlier than I can actually go all in.
So, this yr, I’m taking on God’s invitation to concord by reflecting every day on the next questions:
- Are my phrases and actions in concord with whom God is asking me to be in all areas of my life?
- Are the issues I dedicate my time and power to in concord with my deepest wishes?
- Am I accepting dissonance in my life, as a result of I’m too afraid to hunt boldly the concord God wishes for me?
- The place is God inviting me to elevated freedom so I could type a “pleasing and constant complete”?
I hope that this reflection will take the teachings of 2024 one step additional for me. I’m praying that I could also be daring sufficient in 2025 to permit the assorted features of my life to mix collectively right into a extra seamless and exquisite concord.
What’s God inviting you to this yr? Will you’re taking an opportunity and go all in?
Picture by Marija Zaric on Unsplash.
