Let us pause for a moment in a prayer for our sponsors….
Everybody, including me, loves to shout out TGIF one day a week and go out to eat! But i could say 7 days a week, even 8! and 24 hours of every day, T.G.F.I. Thank God for Internet!
i started yesterday’s blog joining the praises for the newest Knight, Van Morrison, for his Crazy Loving Ways. Let me begin this one thanking God for Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the Inventor of The WorldWide Web, which makes it possible for me to proclaim the wonderful tale of Ichabod, not the one with the headless horseman but my buddy, the one who risks life and limb – his own head – a Catholic Priest somewhere in the Middle East, just trying to share God’s Mercy!
TimBL, as they call you, “these kids of ours” – lol, they hate when we say that! They know no other way. Typewriters to them, even libraries to them, are like old toys, not unlike red wagons or Flexible Flyers. They will never have the reverence or gratitude i have towards one like you – and all of your colleagues, of course, in giving us the ease and the precision, the truly “amazing grace” with which we communicate with our human family around this “little earth.” (and i still barely know how to work this stuff!!!)
How happy i was to awaken this morning to chat with my “Brother,” Ichabod, and share a prayer with him for all of our human family. How excited i was to be able to share with him how sooooooo many now know of him and feel one with him, he needs not feel lonely, at least, as he serves the People of God, be they Muslim or Christian or Hindu or God-less in the Middle East.
Though the Internet is now one more tool which, like so many others, may be used for great harm, it does us limitless good in linking all our lives together! i swear, if TimBL were my neighbor, i’d bring him breakfast in bed every morning!
Through my little blog i have been able to share with the world some of the amazing people that God has placed in my life. The latest offering will take all week, my Ichabod, such a fascinating soul. When i offered my first installment, it was picked up in Italy and Canada and Australia and Brazil, and responses came in from Pittsburgh, Massachusetts and Jersey. Sweet Debbie Isaacson of Danbury shared how she KNOWS that in these present horrors around the world true saints are being molded, but we won’t ever hear of many of them. i was able to present one, as God had graciously allowed my path to cross with that of this awesome friar.
Able to bounce Debbie’s words off of Ichabod, he was able to LAUGH at his new “title” and then to share his weekly homily and how he, like Isaiah in ancient times, had been so touched by the Power of God, that when God said, “I need some help here; who will help me?” Ichabod answered – with both trembling and joy, “Here I am, Lord; send me.” As unworthy as he feels, like Peter on his knees in the sand at the feet of Jesus, the overwhelming feeling is that he just cannot hold in his Gratitude for Mercy. Ichabod will still get into “icky” situations, and sin is always close. Just think how hard it must be, for example, to love people who could no sooner have your head. He will have to constantly return to his source of strength, the Heart of God.
But again! God has put His Heart EVERYWHERE, and another source of strength for “Saint Icky,” as Debbie and i have decided to call him, are his brothers and sisters – so far away and yet sooooooo close – thanks to Sir Timothy. Isn’t it all so amazing? As Louie Armstrong sings, despite all of its horrors, “What a Wonderful World!”
Where else could i send my daughter Molly’s pink rhinoceros for all to ride?
WOW! Thanks, Molly! This is for you, Ichabod!
MercySoup.com 