Concerning Discerning

 An Intro to Blog Book Studies 📚 Lately I’ve been battling between Christian and secular entertainment. Binge-watching ‘Friends’ (which I had never actually seen before last week!) and reading romance novels seem great at the time. But I can never seem to get enough. I can’t put them down – and when I do they leave me hanging at the end, and longing for more.It's almost like I'm addicted.   And I guess, like Ignatius, I’m finding that these things, while great at the time, just don’t satisfy! What does satisfy are healthy + inspirational movies, thought-provoking spiritual books, Radio Rhema and it’s music and messages, and of course scripture!

Something that Jimmy brought up in his retreat on the principle of 'work' was how important it is to allow our work to become prayer, to unite all we do with Jesus and allow Him to sanctify our work.  The next day the First Reading was Acts 20:17-27, and I was particularly struck by verse 22/24: "And now, as captive to the Spirit, I am on my way...not knowing what will happen to me...But I do not count my life of any value to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the Good News of God's Grace." Since then, one of my daily prayers has been: "Come Holy Spirit, take me captive so I can't help but follow where You lead and do what You ask of me today!" And the Spirit definitely has! We've been on some great adventures together lately 😊 

God answers prayers!! Just read over my previous post which was very spur of the moment, and so much has changed since then! I'm feeling a lot more at peace with loving and serving the Lord to the best of my ability in the place He has planted me this year.  Over lockdown I've been participating in a weekly 'Quarantine Retreat' series with Jimmy Mitchell  (Founder of LoveGood ) called 'Let Beauty Speak.'  You know when you pick up a Spiritual Book and finally read the next chapter after you've just left it sitting there for months? And what you read perfectly fits what you're going through in life right now? Well every single week of these retreats have been like that for me!

NZ is now in Covid Alert Level 2 (can't read that without hearing the 'this is a Covid-19 announcement' voice that's been popping up all over our media like we're in an apocalyptic movie or something 😅).  This means life has returned to almost normal - I'm working back at school, shops are open again (with added safety procedures), strangers are a little less likely to cross the road to avoid you, and I can see my friends and family again. In fact, today we only have  one active case ! And I went to Mass for the first time in about 10 weeks, on Pentecost Sunday! I'd like it say it was a beautiful blessed moment, but I hadn't really prepared my heart to receive Jesus, plus it was 8am and I was half asleep, and it wasn't my own parish (sadly only two parishes in Wellington were offering Mass this weekend with a 100 person cut off). It has been a big shock to the system - especially as an introvert who's become very comfortable with only interactin...