WHAT IS GOD THINKING ABOUT HIS CHURCH

As we are entering San Pedro, may the welcome bridge also be lit up for you. 

Welcome Lord. Why does it feel, to me, like you are visiting instead of at home?

I sensed the Lord answering something like this:

"The Catholic communities have longed for and stewarded an awareness for my presence. 

I want you ALL to be people of my presence. You don’t just need a visitation, as if I would be a guest, a weekend visitor, doing the important stuff only God can do.

No, I am ever present. I am with you.

You are frustrated and tired because you are doing lots of stuff in lots of places FOR me. I have called you friends—my friend! My abiding friend who doesn’t do stuff for me, but WITH me and IN me.

You are isolated, and not just because of covid. But because you are different from each other - different languages, different styles, different emphasis, different parts of my word that you underline. 

I love those differences.

They are not the problem. Only when you add judgments that don’t come from me is there an isolation and competition causing problem.

I made you all and love you all. 

Only, all together, as one body in San Pedro, do you even begin to reflect the fullness of my mind, the affection of my heart, the generosity of my embrace, the warmth of my touch. 

I don’t have you all on a spreadsheet, nor are you in brackets. I am not upper management, and you are not branches or franchises in competition.

You are my bride. My own flesh. You have my attention. I see you, my beloved. I long for you—for free and full expressing of mutual affections. 

You have my attention.

Dear bride, do I have your’s?

Seek my face."

Our heart says to you, “Your face, Lord, do we seek.” Psalm 27.8

(thoughts of a San Pedro pastor)