{"id":9623,"date":"2017-12-11T11:53:20","date_gmt":"2017-12-11T17:53:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oddwalkministries.com\/oddblog\/?p=9623"},"modified":"2017-12-11T11:53:20","modified_gmt":"2017-12-11T17:53:20","slug":"seeing-in-the-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/oddwalkministries.com\/oddblog\/2017\/12\/11\/seeing-in-the-dark\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeing in the Dark"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I&#8217;d like to begin this week with the song, <em>To Know Darkness<\/em>, beautifully written by Orin and included on our 2007 album, <a href=\"http:\/\/oddwalkministries.com\/oddblog\/lyrics-audio\/walk-away-different-lyrics-audio\/\"><em>Walk Away Different<\/em><\/a>. Take a moment to listen to the song. I&#8217;ve included the lyrics here as well\u2014<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QZU03uhGULE\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>God our Father, we long to see you as you are.<\/em><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>If we seek you in the heavens, in stars in the sky, you are there.<\/em><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>Lights of our own creation may keep us from knowing Your presence above.<\/em><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>God, our Father, help us to know darkness so that we may see your light.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>O Christ Jesus, we long to see you face to face.<\/em><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>If we seek you in each person, in each human heart you are there.<\/em><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>Lights of our own creation may keep us from knowing your presence below,<\/em><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>O Christ Jesus, help us to know darkness so that we may see your light.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>Holy Spirit, we long to see you in our lives.<\/em><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>If we seek you in our being, in each living soul you are there.<\/em><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>Lights of our own creation may keep us from knowing your presence within.<\/em><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>Holy Spirit, help us to know darkness so that we may see your light.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>Words and Music by Orin Johnson. \u00a9 2008, GIA Publications, Inc.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>After praying together the Lord&#8217;s Prayer at each Mass, the presider offers a prayer that includes the words, &#8220;as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.&#8221; As you know, Advent is a time of waiting, but the word &#8220;advent&#8221; comes from the Latin word meaning &#8220;coming&#8221;. We are waiting for Jesus, yes, but we do so fully aware that He <em>is<\/em> coming. While that last sentence probably sounded funny, I know most of us get caught taking words and rituals we pray for granted, occasionally forgetting that they hold real meaning for our lives. We have to stay awake! Jesus&#8217;s return could be at any time and we must be ready. That isn&#8217;t to say that we should downplay annually celebrating the birth of Jesus. Our God, incarnate? Amazing! What a reason to party!! We simply need to also keep in mind that Advent preparations need to ready us for life after December 25th, too.<\/p>\n<p>In thinking about all of this today, I was struck by the lyrics of <em>To Know Darkness<\/em>. While I do \u00e2\u20ac\u02dclong&#8217; not only for Jesus to be an integral part of my life, and ultimately for me to be in Christ&#8217;s presence for eternity, I don&#8217;t do as much as I should to prepare for those things to become reality. Between family obligations, work expectations, social engagements, work with Oddwalk, social media, and lots of other distractions, I have quite a few \u00e2\u20ac\u02dclights of our (my) own creation&#8217; that can potentially wash out the light of Christ for me.<\/p>\n<p>I need to remember that regularly removing myself (even briefly) from the glare of those Shannon-made lights, and retreating to the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcdarkness&#8217; of solitude and reflection, will help my vision readjust. Spending more time in prayer, going to confession, taking time to read the bible, (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.catholic.org\/advent\/advent.php?id=18\">especially those passages we hear often in Advent<\/a>) will help my eyes of faith reset. Maybe those things can help your eyes as well.<\/p>\n<p><em> \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcO Christ Jesus, help us to know darkness so that we may see your light.&#8217;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>-Shannon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">I&#8217;d like to begin this week with the song, To Know Darkness, beautifully written by Orin and included on our 2007 album, Walk Away Different. Take a moment to listen to the song. I&#8217;ve included the lyrics here as well\u2014 God our Father, we long to see you as you are. If we seek you&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/oddwalkministries.com\/oddblog\/2017\/12\/11\/seeing-in-the-dark\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77,31,14,39,88,91,12,21,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advent","category-bible","category-catholicism","category-christmas","category-jesus","category-jesusjusticejoy","category-prayer","category-reflection","category-scripture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/oddwalkministries.com\/oddblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/oddwalkministries.com\/oddblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/oddwalkministries.com\/oddblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oddwalkministries.com\/oddblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oddwalkministries.com\/oddblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9623"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/oddwalkministries.com\/oddblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9626,"href":"http:\/\/oddwalkministries.com\/oddblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9623\/revisions\/9626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/oddwalkministries.com\/oddblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oddwalkministries.com\/oddblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/oddwalkministries.com\/oddblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}