Morning offering. Does it make a difference?
About ten years ago during the financial downturn I lost my job and moved to South Africa. I remember being terrified as I took the twelve hour flight to Cape Town.
I was on my own. I was starting a new job in an NGO, far from my family in a country with a reputation for violence, break-ins and car-jacking! I had little savings to draw on. I was relying solely on my ability to work well and wanted to gain useful experience that would assist me back home.
Everything about this great country and my life there was new, everything was interesting, everything was scary.
I rented an apartment, initially on my own. I stuck a pink post-it on the inside of the apartment door. I looked at it every morning as I left the apartment. The post-it read, “remember why you are here.” These words stuck with me during my time in Cape Town.
The purpose of these words was to instil in me a sense of focus in my work and friendships in my new home in South Africa. They were words of encouragement to jump at every opportunity that Cape Town would provide. I wanted my absence from my family, my friends and my country to be truly worth it. From a work perspective, I wanted to gain valuable experience, learning how the South African legal system and political institutions operated. From a personal perspective, my stay in Cape Town had to merit all the hen parties I would miss, the family celebrations that I heard about second-hand, my absence from my life in Ireland. I had to remember that I was eventually going home, bringing with me my life-experience from windy Cape Town.
In our lives, a “morning offering” is that pink post-in on the apartment door. It reminds us why we are here in life, that this world isn’t the end of the story. Rather, our home is in heaven and there is a God who has made us to enjoy this life. He wants us to seize every opportunity life gives us to be better people, kinder friends, and more loyal family members.
The morning offering is the prayer that we can say first thing in the morning. It is where we zoom with God and say, whatever happens today is for you. However hard my work is – I’ll do it for you. I won’t let my ‘temporary imprisonment’ at home get to me – not today – and that I will do it for you. I will do it for you God who made me and this world together with all its birds, bees, stars and streams. I can say ‘thank you’ for the simple things, the cup of tea in the morning, the sunny day and a full load of clean washing, the successful conference call finally scheduled which went much better than anyone anticipated. I can be grateful for all the people who are still in my life, wherever they may be in this world only a ‘facetime’ away. The morning offering gives me that spiritual strength to let go of the things that are not mine to carry, to hand them over to God. It is a prayer that reminds me that God is alway close and he can turn to good all the things I would be happy to pray away.
Finally, with the morning offering I can ask for the strength to be that ‘more’ for other people, for my family, in my job, at home.
My pink post-it has been replaced by an internal post-in that reads: “ My God, today is for you. Help me to be better and to love more.”