Sunday August 24th Update

Thank you for praying for the LaGue's. Dan continues to try and get his pain under control. He is taking small steps every day. He now has a home health service that has been wonderful. His goals are this; pain control and then to get more and more mobile so that he can get more tests done to find out why this new surge has happened. He has an MRI of his brain scheduled for this Wednesday.

Carol's parents came this last week to help. This week was very busy as Zachary started a new high school and Blake and Mitch started school as well. Please pray for Carol as she continues to manage everything as well as giving injections and being a private nurse to Dan.


A REFLECTION FROM DAN:
I read an article months ago about a historical figure, Jean-Pierre De Caussade, who wrote about the importance and the potential sacredness of each moment. It was a fascinating article and I’ve been reflecting over his words these last couple of weeks. Below is an extended excerpt from his thoughts that I hope will be a blessing to you. The main point he makes is that since God has designed that we experience life one moment at a time, the present moment is the only time available to us to experience God and to fellowship with God and this makes every moment like a sacrament – i.e. a vehicle for knowing God. So offer yourself to God in the present moment - experience God in the present moment - every moment…thus making every moment sacred whether you’re in an emergency room, a hospital bed, a business desk, a laundry room or a pulpit. All can be times of experiencing Christ!!

The will of God is at each moment before us like an immense, inexhaustible ocean that no human heart can fathom .. the divine will is a deep abyss of which the present moment is the entrance. If you plunge into this abyss you will find it infinitely more vast than your desires.

He who knows that a certain person in disguise is the king, behaves towards him very differently than another who, only perceiving an ordinary man treats him. In the same way the soul that recognizes the will of God in every smallest event, and also in those that are most distressing and direful, receives all with an equal joy, pleasure and respect.

It throws open all its doors to receive with honour what others fear and fly from with horror. The outward appearance may be mean and contemptible, but beneath this abject garb the heart discovers and honours the majesty of the king. I cannot describe what the heart feels when it accepts the divine will in such humble, poor, and mean disguises.

There is not a moment in which God does not present Himself under the cover of some pain to be endured, of some consolation to be enjoyed, or of some duty to be performed. All that takes place within us, around us, or through us, contains and conceals His divine action.

That which is sent us at the present moment is the most useful because it is intended especially for us .. if we could lift the veil, and if we were attentive and watchful, God would continually reveal Himself to us, and we should see His divine action in everything that happened to us, and rejoice in it. At each successive occurrence we should exclaim: “It is the Lord,” and we should accept every fresh circumstance as a gift of God. If we lived (this) life of faith without intermission, we should have an uninterrupted commerce with God and a constant familiar intercourse with Him.

To consider God equally good in things that are petty and ordinary as in those that are great and uncommon is to have a faith that is not ordinary, but great and extraordinary .. by every event divine love desires to unite us to Himself .. He has ordained, arranged, or permitted everything about us, everything that happens to us with a view to this union ..

To be satisfied with the present moment is to delight in, and to adore the divine will in all that has to be done or suffered in all that succession of events that fill, as they pass, each present moment. Those souls that have this disposition adore God with redoubled love; nothing can hide Him from the piercing eye of faith.

We must listen to God from moment to moment .. Is not all time a succession of the effects of the divine operation, working at every instant, filling, sanctifying, and supernaturalizing them all? Had the Saints of the first ages any other secret than that of becoming from moment to moment whatever the divine power willed to make them? And will this power cease to pour forth its glory on the souls which abandon themselves to it without reserve?

Jean-Pierre De Caussade, The Sacrament of the Present Moment, 1751