St. Matthew’s Rectory front door!
Bizarrely true!
Roadblocks
God of the unexpected,
You place the paths before us, and us on the path.
Is it you too who put the unexpected in place? The roadblocks? The rough road? The manhole cover out-of-place?
Sometimes I suspect, it is you. And sometimes it’s less-than-easy to be grateful for the hard stuff that we couldn’t see coming.
Yet the way to roll the stone away, to fill the hole, to pull the manhole cover to its proper home is precisely by saying ‘thank you’. Not with the tongue only, but with the heart.
As in: How did this happen?
How did this get here?
How did we get into this mess?
This sucks. And still, thank you.
Thank you dear God, living and working in unexpected places.
Amen
~ JPM
An Advent Song: Patience People, John Foley SJ
New York: City Hall Asks Houses of Worship to Shelter Migrants
Officials are looking for churches, temples and synagogues that can provide “secure space with bathrooms and a kitchen where an asylee family or individuals could sleep during the nights or live temporarily.”
https://apple.news/A6buWlCmHQu-JVj1dEv-uGA
Stay in touch: mcginty@writeme.com
And don’t forget this!
Believe it. 
“….And still, thank you.” A modern twist on a favorite I’ve been working on for decades, “In all things give thanks…” I think it’s from Paul, whom I cannot like, but whose devotion to God is too large to ignore.