Listen, Love and Dream

I just arrived last night here in Calgary. I’ve been reassigned here for mission. I cannot help but look back with gratitude to God for allowing me to experience amazing grace when I was based in Toronto. God is an awesome God!

I experienced genuine love and care. I went there for mission supposedly to enrich others and I ended up enriched myself. I realized that when we forego ourselves for Christ, Christ embraces us the more. The more we forget our wants and cares the more He lavishes us beyond our needs.

I’ve learned a lot in my mission in the east, but for now, let me focus on three: Listen, Love and Dream.

I’ve learned to listen. Listening is an essential part of mission. Without a listening heart and mind, it’s easy to make mistakes and misjudgments. When we start listening attentively to ourselves we become more grounded, we will know our limitations and we will know what we can do. Figments of imagination banishes when we listen to what our heart says.

I’ve learned to love. Yes, love. It is easy to love when everything is good. But love is tested when situation are bad and we encounter seemingly unlovable people. It made me realize I am also unlovable at times, so why not stretch myself more and love; not just understand someone, but love.

I’ve learned to dream more. You know when you are long already in mission, sometimes it seems like you’re hitting a wall, but Toronto provided an open door. It brought me to places beyond my imagination. I went to Montreal and Ottawa; I even went to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. I flew to Newfoundland and Bermuda. I also went to the land where the sun never sets, in Nunavut and road trips down to the Gulf of Mexico. All these and more! It opened my mind to more possibilities. It made me dream more for the mission and even for myself. To dream is to hope. Hope becomes more vivid in dreams. Then by dreaming, we find courage to make it happen. Somehow reality is easier to achieve when we dream for it.

So as I continue, walk with me O Lord and grant me the grace to listen, love and dream. Amen.

by aats