Touch and go

I began these pages with the suggestion that a common destination is the only realization we can truly share.
Reaffirmation of that fact serves to remind me that there are no conclusions in this life; our paths converge, we meet, we bring both our gifts and our giftedness to the common table as we become fellow travellers, and we move on. However closely we may walk, we shall never merge: we travel our own journeys in parallel with each other.

As we journey further from the world, and closer to the source of the answers to all needs, we should simultaneously venture deeper into the world, and into a clearer comprehension of the needs of the people we meet. In doing so, we come to the awesome awareness that we are called upon to play a part in the bringing together of these sometimes (apparently) irreconcilable halves, both in ourselves and in the world at large.
It is as though we could reach out with both hands and grasp the previously unreachable bare ends of a severed cable; grasp, and - becoming a living symbol of prayerful obedience to God’s will - place our hands together in petition for the restoration of that which has been lost. Thus we bring His light into the darkness, and enable His power to flow in places where there had been no reception.
In short, we become conscious of having been empowered; we are able to bring God’s power into other lives and situations.

And where are these needy people and troubled circumstances?
They are right where we are. They are all around us. We are in the midst of them.
However deep our felt need for help in areas of our own lives, we have become a part of God’s provision within a world that ails, aches and sorrows far beyond the pain of most of our own experiences and mistakes.
Those among us whose present troubles or fearful pasts are way beyond most of our imaginings, are potentially able to bring God’s love into hidden recesses which may remain inaccessible to everyone else. Having themselves been through the darkest of nights, they are empowered to become light in the emptiness of the most deeply buried voids. They are frequently the best placed to bring a new dawn into lives which are being lived as endless night.

Before we can serve God and each other in this way, we need to be following in our Lord’s footsteps in our own lives. We need to have become fully aware of His presence, and of having become part of His flow of love into the world. We need to be aware that we have been touched by God, and to recognize a confirmation of that touch in the peace and the untroubled nature of that which fills us.
We know we have been found; we know we have been called by name.
Those of us who have experienced His touch in our lives, must extend our belief to an acknowledgement that we are now counted among the ‘Touched’; that we are called to believe in our ability to bring others within reach of that same redeeming touch.
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Wherever we find ourselves to be, - ‘let us go forward from the point we have each attained.’ (Philippians 3:16)
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