CPE 3

It's been three weeks already. And many growth areas have surfaced! It has been hard work but also very fruitful in terms of getting to know myself and my questions about God's presence in those who suffer.......

I have been faced with my own vulnerable love as a mother, as I listened to another mother's journey through her child's prolonged illness. Every mother's heart hurts for her hurting child......and what mother would not be willing to take the place of her child, to bear his pain?

I have also been faced with so many who are ageing and experiencing the limitations of growing old, even more than any particular illness. The stories these days are very similar: people live in nuclear families - and even if they live with their child, most aged parents find that today's lifestyle means that their working family spends little time with them, apart from seeing to physical needs. The world becomes a lonely place for the aged. I have found that all those I visited welcomed my presence, and were more than willing for a chat. They were in fact grateful for someone who could spend time just being with them......with my faltering Cantonese, I have to just trust that care was communicated somehow, with God's help.

I have also been trusted with life stories that confronted me with the realities of life in this broken world. Yet in the midst of that, there were often glimpses of grace, of the human person finding a way out, in God's providence.

The Lord has much to teach me even as I question and search my faith for answers: sometimes, as I pray for another's healing (for example for someone with advanced cancer), I wonder what I really hope for. And I suspect I often want God to be the 'miracle worker' in such situations. Perhaps he asks me to stop and listen for his presence in other ways; providing other 'answers' to my troubled questions. Surely we trust that our Lord Emmanuel is present in special ways for every one who calls out to him.