In spite of the flu, I have managed to crawl through the rest of Numbers this week. However, my brain and fingers are not yet up to a new post, so I am re-posting the most popular of the MMMs. To make it easier, rather than sending you to the original link (MMM#7), I am re-printing it in full right here. Today I got stopped very early in Exodus: Chapter 2, to be specific. I was captivated by the story of Moses -- not of the man, but of the baby.
Reading: Exodus 2:1-10.
Meditation: What struck me about the little baby in the bulrushes was just how vulnerable he was and how perfectly God arranged everything for his protection and also for his mother's psychological well-being. Anything could have happened to baby Moses, and by the law of the Pharaoh, he should have been killed. However, God led Pharaoh's daughter to have compassion on him and then guided the handmaiden to Moses's own mother for breastfeeding him. The relief his mother must have felt in all of this is something with which any mother can empathize.
Moses and his mother owed a great debt of gratitude to God for His protection. True, it turned out later that God had an immense plan for using Moses to deliver His people, the Hebrews, from slavery. Nonetheless, one must say "thank you" with great awe when God provides this kind of protection. I know because my family and I have been protected by God upon occasion after occasion. I will provide just a few examples, but they represent only a small fraction of the times that God has come to our rescue.
In addition to the string of muggings where I did not get hurt and lost very little (not that I have much to lose), God clearly has taken care of me in my travels. One interesting situation comes immediately to mind: a trip to Campinas, Brazil. I sat in seat B on the plane, and the guy in seat A, Eddie, was surprisingly from Campinas. We got to know each other, and, giving me his home phone number, he invited me to visit if I could find time in my schedule while there. At the baggage claim in Sao Paolo, we shook hands and parted. I trotted out to the curb to find the US Embassy driver who was supposed to take me to Campinas. He was not there. I called the embassy, but it being the weekend, no one had any idea as to who should have been there. Since neither the staff duty officer nor I had the home phone number for my contact at the embassy for the project I was to do in Campinas, I asked some of the locals how to get to Campinas and took the bus that they told me about. Arriving in Campinas, I called Eddie. What else? I had no idea what hotel I was supposed to be at. Eddie rescued me from the bus station, took me home where his wife gave me a wonderful dinner and his young daughter drew me a wonderful picture that I still have, and then looked up in the local phone book the telephone number of the institution where I was to be working. When we called the institution, there was an emergency phone number given on a recording, and from that we were able to contact the director, who did know what hotel I was supposed to be at and efficiently arranged everything for the night and for my arrival at the institution in the morning.
Another time, Lizzie, who was eleven at the time, and I were walking home from the metro station in a suburb of Arlington, Virginia one Saturday morning, when we glimpsed three men, probably in their early twenties, walking behind us, clearly stoned, and clearly targeting us. As they walked, they chanted, "You're going to die." They came closer and closer. Except for them, we were alone on the street and, being new in town, knew no one. As they came within touching distance, I turned into the nearest house, figuring anyone would help us in this case. As it turned out, no one was home, and the three men were lounging against a tree outside the yard, observing us.
"Oh, Lizzie, he told us he would be in the basement; we need the other door," I said just loudly enough to be heard by the young men, and we calmly walked around to the back of the house. Once out of sight, I whispered urgently to Lizzie, "Run!" And we ran all the way home through the back alleys.
The young men did not follow because they did not see us. More important, Lizzie did not panic for one minute. She just kept talking to me about mundane things as if she were not hearing the voices behind us, which I also ignored. Perhaps this was a self-rescue by a brilliant, calm, and collected mother and daughter, but I don't think so. I think Lizzie's calmness came partly from me, partly from herself, and partly from a sense of security that only God could have given her. Had she panicked, as a typical 11-year-old would have/should have, we would probably not be alive today.
Another planting of a calm and collected sense of security occurred with 7-year-old Shane, who was riding a public bus to and from his private school in what was usually in those days (25 years ago) a very safe area. One day, school got out late, and Shane missed his regular bus. As he waited for the next one, he was the only person sitting at the bus stop. A car with two men pulled up, and one of them ordered cute blue-eyed, blond Shane to get into his car.
"No, no. I was told to wait here," he said. "My parents are in the restaurant." (There was a Red Lobster restaurant behind the bus stop.)
One of the men got out of the car and headed for Shane. Shane headed for the restaurant, and seeing a couple walking out of the restaurant toward the parking lot, he hollered and waved, "Mom, Dad, I am over here!"
The man leaped into the car, and the car sped away. Shane then ran into the restaurant and asked one of the waitresses to call me. When I arrived, he was eating a free lobster dinner, surrounded by the waitress staff, who thought he was "darling" and "so cool-headed!"
Again, I could say that Shane was a very intelligent and collected child. He was. But where did that couple in the parking lot come from at just the right time? And how did a 7-year-old, even one in the fifth grade, as Shane was, feel secure enough not to panic? (Oh, and for those who would ask, I made alternative arrangements to the public bus after that for Shane even though all the other children in his class rode the bus.)
And then there was Doah, my mentally challenged youngest, who wanted to go in to work with one Saturday when I had to pull some overtime. I guess it took me too long to get ready because he managed to unlock the door, wander outside, and head down the street, the "street" being a four-lane major highway. When I found him missing, I panicked. I ran down the highway, calling him, but he was nowhere in sight. After only a few minutes, thank God (literally), someone emerged from a side street, asking if I were looking for a little blond boy. Was I?! He had been strolling right in the middle of the highway when some people leaving church had seen him and scooped him up, but they then had no way of returning him. The conversation, which was truly the best that Doah, given his level of intelligence, could manage, went like this:
Q: What's your name? A: Doah.
Q: What's your mother's name? A: Mommy.
Q: What's your father's name? A: Daddy.
Q: Where do you live? A: Home.
They were as glad to see me as I was to see them. I still shake when I think about how close I came to losing Doah, and how seemingly miraculously these people appeared, both to prevent him from being struck by a car and then again to tell me they had him.
I could give two dozen more examples. However, I will stop here with one short, final comment -- not from me but from the interim priest I wrote about yesterday, who once walked me to the door of the parish office where I was the last to depart at the conclusion of an evening meeting. He just stood in the doorway, and so I looked at him quizzically. "I will watch you until you get to your car," he said protectively.
"I hope you have extraordinary distance vision," I replied, "because I walked!"
"Then, please be very careful," he responded.
"I'm not worried," I told him. "I feel protected."
He looked at me piercingly and said in an odd, quiet voice, "I think you are."
In my mind, there is no "think" about it. I know I am. I don't know why God protects me and my family so carefully, and I don't ask. I am simply grateful that God does. I suppose these experiences, among many others, are what has led to my unflappable trust in God.
And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to ask God to protect everyone the way He has protected me (and many others of my acquaintance), to express my regret for taking chances that make Him have to protect me and for any times I have forgotten to say thank you (especially those times when I was still an atheist and attributed every good thing to Serendipity, not aware that the other name for Serendipity is God), to give thanks for His willingness to take care of me whether or not I have "earned" His protection, and to offer praise for the remarkable ways in which He is able to intervene and prevent bad things from happening in the first place as well as all the times that He turns bad into good.
After that, I will spend some time in contemplation with this wonderful God whom I know I can trust with absolutely anything and everything, including my life -- and have.
I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:
Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts.For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of inspirational blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the sidebar of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.
Have a good day and a good week, remembering that always you are in the protection of God. Be confidently valiant for Him.
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