Little Things for God

By Mary Wollney

Preparing Our Hearts for Christmas

At this time of year we receive a variety of holiday invitations.  Traditional ones come from friends asking us to join them in celebration.  Non-traditional invitations come from both society and religion:

·                    Society invites us to prepare our homes for the holiday. 

·                    Advent invites us to prepare our hearts for Christmas.

We know how to prepare our homes.  But just how do we prepare our hearts???

We do it one trying situation at a time.  Every time we feel ‘pushed’ we are given an opportunity to change and prepare our heart by sharing love instead of frustration.  

Sometimes a visual aid helps: When we are stressed and in a foul frame of mind, that’s when it helps to visualize lighting a candle of love in our hearts.

Candles represent light. When a candle of love is in our heart we feel at peace, which makes it easier to share love.  Sharing love is one way to prepare our heart for Christmas.

As we go about our lives it’s easy for our candle of love to either blow out or completely burn out.  Someone may cut us off in traffic.  Someone may take ‘our’ parking space.  Someone may cut in line at the department store.  They may utter an unkind word.  They may make unreasonable demands.  Every day, all day long, life presents us with situations that can cause our candle of love to burn out.  Darkness results.

That’s when we need to relight our candle.

Little Things for God

By Mary Wollney

A Gift from the Beach

It’s interesting to know that one little thing can lead to a variety of discussions and raise so many questions.            

Last Saturday morning I went for a walk along the beach. Each day the treasures are different.  This day was unusual because partially buried in the sand was a strand of beads.  It turned out to be rosary beads.  Not your usual beach treasure. 

It was a first for me, and especially meaningful because later that day I was to speak to approximately 1000 people at mass.  It felt to me that God was saying, “I am with you. Take these beads and go forth to tell your story.”

When I spoke at mass I mentioned the treasure I found.  I was a bit surprised by the reactions. One gentleman remarked that he reached for a Kleenex when he heard the story. It seems that for most this find was a sign from God that touched their heart.

Another woman’s reaction was simple.