11 women (that includes five CEMistes) took the TGV from Marseille to Lille for the annual Church of Christ French (and Swiss) Women's Retreat. I think this was my second women's retreat in my life (I seem to remember to going to one with Pitman at a hotel. What I remember the most is Cordelia's outfits as MC.)
The churches in Paris, Geneva, Lausanne and Lille were well-represented. We stayed in an old St. Ignatious monastery/nunnery/abbey that is now used as a spiritual retreat center, for spirt-building activities of all sorts. Typical monk food, as I'm told, is stale bread, soup and a glass of beer, so the food quality/diversity was better than you would expect, but it was still not very good. The building was very impressive on the outside, quite a Chateau. Inside, it was rather banal, and silence was imposed as much as possible in the hallways and in our rooms at night.
The CEM girls in front of the Lille Retreat Center.
The theme of the retreat, set by the Marseille ladies, was "the desert." We performed a humorous-yet-pedantic sketch depicting visitors to "The Desert." I played a camel, well equipped by God to live in the desert environment, unlike my whiny Bedouin master. The presentations were "Why the Desert?" (Answer: So much of the Bible takes place in a desert setting), "When my life is a desert" and "an Oasis in the Desert." My transcription/slation of the last talk is provided below:
An oasis in the desert
Who would like to be blessed? Who is blessed?
It’s true that sometimes we suffer in silence, and no one knows it, but that’s our fault. No one should suffer in silence when he is in the Lord. If we are ashamed to confess our faults and to share what is going wrong in our lives, we have a problem. We are not a family. It is a sin to suffer in silence. We have too many verses in the Bible that tell us that we are a family. We are wrong and we sin against God when we suffer in silence. We are missing out on the richness of the desert God is sending us through.
We know our Bible verses, but we don’t hear them anymore.
Recount your desert. The Bible is a book of witness. We underestimate witness. It’s not just coming up before a group and crying. It’s glorifying God in your life. If we don’t witness, we are keeping God from blessing us and others. We each have a desert; each desert is different.
When we cross the desert, what do we see? Sand, sand. We are standing in the desert, we lie down in the sand, not to take a nap, but because we can’t survive anymore. We eat, drink in the desert, but we drink and eat sand.
Suffering is suffering. Don’t try to compare your suffering. Each one suffers with what he has, what he is. At the giving moment, in the desert, we are crushed by the heat of the sun. In this desert, we are alone. Why? Often, because we have chosen to be alone. We are tired. We finish by sitting down in the sand. From this moment, we start to ask good question. What are the good questions?
There are 2: What do you want me to do? What do you want me to learn?
When I asked God these questions, two verses came to me. Matthew 6:23: "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his justice." I prayed this verse after that. Why did God give me this verse? “All these things shall be added unto you.” After I started asking these good questions, I abandoned my solitary life. Ask God to forgive you. We have feelings that we’ve injured God; we shouldn’t stop to ask him to forgive us. When we are suffering, we feel like we don’t exist, like we’re useless.
Sitting down in the desert, we put ourselves in position to listen to God. In this period of suffering, we don’t think about blessings. We don’t see the way out.
(reads Footprints in the Sand)
Can we be blessed in difficult moments? Yes! The first blessing is that when you are suffering so much, your Father carries you. Blessing and promise are basically the same thing for God.
Blessing is a good thing that appears at the right time, if we are faithful to God.
God gives us his blessings. We have the blessings of God every day. We “wait for” blessings, but they are already there! Unfortunately, we have forgotten the blessings! We haven’t meditated enough on the word of God. We don’t need to search for blessings, they are there. We have everything we need: God and us.
Blessings:
Before he left them, Jesus said to his disciples, I will give you the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit contains the Fruits of the Spirits. We have the peace of God in our oasis. Are we convinced that we have God’s spirit in us?
The Love of God. Unconditional, real love that is a force in suffering to overcome guilt.
We have the gentleness of God. Anger, rancor keep us from coming near God. Gentleness helps us to help others. Others will come to us and we can tell them what isn’t going well in our lives. When you are in the desert, don’t have a face that tells people to stay away from us. Be careful of what your face is communicating.
Faithfulness. It is in perseverance that we will have deliverance.
Kindness. Are you conscious of how much we have? We search for good for others. Without kindness, we spend our time worrying about our suffering, instead of helping others.
Goodness. The world doesn’t need hopelessness, it already has enough. God shows us how we can get away from hopelessness.
Patience. God gave us his entire spirit: don’t say you don’t have patience! God gives us what we need to endure until we can resolve our problems.
Joy. When we are convinced that we are delivered, that we are more than conquerors despite the circumstances. We know that our suffering will not last forever: it’s not in the plan of God that our suffering endures. God gave his son a quick death, his suffering does not last long.
Self-control. Will help us to avoid creating other problems instead of dealing with the problem we already have.
Use these blessings! When it’s going badly, ask God what fruits of the spirit you need fortified.
Barbara told me to read Romans 8. I know what’s in Romans 8! I’ve already read it. Barbara said: Read Romans 8 every day! I read it because Barbara told me to. Roman 8 is a summary of all the blessings we have, of everything we have that will help us cross the desert.
Listen to Barbara, read Romans 8 every day!
I was thinking of other blessings of God, and in the spirit, other blessings came to me. One of them is the Presence of God.
Praise.
Light. The Lord is my light and my salvation: whom shall I fear?
Rest. It’s not you who will win the battle. God fights for you.
Protection.
Thankfulness.
Strength.
Service.
We need to be on our feet! What do we ask God? God, give me strength! Get me out of here! We ask for things for ourselves. We demand comfort and blessings. But maybe it’s not for us that we are suffering. We should be serving those who God has sent us. That is how we grow his kingdom. We have every gift that we need to serve him. We have gifts and talents. The only way to get out of the desert is service! Service is a double-blessing. Buy one get one free. Why don’t we use our free will to help others, to work for each other? That doesn’t mean we should crush ourselves in serving others. We should be ready to listen. No one should suffer in silence. God had another plan. We’re going to get out of the desert. We want to get out as quickly as possible, but if we don’t use what God gave us to, we’ll never get out. We might die there.
HOW do we use the blessings that God has given us?
“I have come to give you life, and in abundance.”
Stop thinking blessings are just for you.
“Alphabet of God’s promises.” Written by an old woman. We have a lot to learn from old woman. “Worries never keep me from sleeping. I say to the Lord: take care of my worries, and I sleep well.” She reads the promises of God, she falls asleep by the time she gets to promise “D”. But be like this woman, who says to God, “You can take care of my problems, so I can sleep. Then I can have the strength so I have a good night’s sleep and can attack my problems tomorrow.”
Don’t be a hypocrite with God. He knows already that we have problems. God wants us to tell him when we have problems.
What is the final goal of these blessings?
First, to change us. To feed us spiritually. God’s response is spiritual. We want to be comfortable in our bodies, but that’s ephemeral. Physical problems never end.
The final blessing that we have is eternal life.
The 2nd purpose of blessings is to teach us to know the law of good. We’re afraid God will ask us to do the things we don’t want to do. We should ask him what his plan is.
Mary said “I am the servant of the Lord. May it be unto me as you have said.” We have a fear of the unknown. God will never give us a task that won’t nourish us.
The third purpose is to teach us to live for the essential. What is essential for God? Listen and serve. We can’t just do anything that we want.
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