We should trust in God's presence

My sister and her husband are expecting their second baby any time now,

From what I remember she went a few days beyond her last due date last time. Since then her son has been making up for lost time in a whirlwind of energy and destruction.

The majority of family and friends are hoping for a little girl. In contrast there is a minority of one - her son - who is looking for a boy, a little brother to boss and play football with.

As you can imagine it is a time of much anxiety and nervous expectation. Above all, regardless of the baby being a boy or a girl you pray the infant will be born safe and healthy. Life is such a precious gift and you dare not take anything for granted. My sister will not thank me for saying she is now the size of a house; she waddles, rather than walks. It is certainly a man’s world when you witness the exhaustion and limitations endured by women through pregnancy.

Unlike her first pregnancy my sister has to cope with the demands of a four-year-old whose idea of chilling out is to dismantle the house. I often wonder how my granny Ferguson coped with seventeen pregnancies, eventually rearing fourteen children.

This year in particular, in my role as hospital chaplain, I have witnessed so much heart break.

No matter what stage parents lose a child, the aftermath is devastating. This has added to my own anxiety over recent weeks and months. In the midst of pregnancy my brother-in-law and sister have moved house and if this was not enough my sister is learning to drive. At this stage it surprises me how she can squeeze herself and her bump into the driver’s seat.

In Luke’s gospel we have reached the stage were Jesus is addressing the crowds and his disciples about their fears and their anxieties. We worry and fret about so many things and not all of them are important. In the great scheme of life and death we’re asked to trust in God’s guiding presence.

We have no control over what will happen today or tomorrow, what we can do is invite God, through prayer into the ordinariness of everyday life.

If God is a part of the daily ebb and flow of our lives, we need not be anxious about how we stand before the judgement of God.

If we have a relationship with Jesus, if we welcome him into the chaos of the ups and downs of life, God will not treat us as strangers. As disciples we’re asked to reflect on our words and actions in the light of God’s judgement, in the context of following the example of Jesus.

This is the true mark of our lives, are we really at the service of one another? Can we put others first or are we consumed by our own importance?