The Adventure Has Begun

It’s the excitement I used to feel when I was a child and it was time for the Children’s Film Festival on Saturday morning. The cartoons were over, and that was okay because Kukla, Fran and Ollie were about to present a movie. That’s where I met Heidi. It’s where I visited the Swiss Alps and had a curmudgeony grandpa who raised goats and befriended a girl in a wheelchair.

It’s the convergence of adventure and fear – like when the babysitter would let me stay up for Creature Feature, and I would battle Godzilla or the changeling woman who could morph into a serpent.

It’s the feeling of staying overnight for the first time at a friend’s house.

It’s the first day of middle school.

It’s the wedding night.

Or the moment the nurse puts a plastic hospital bracelet on my arm and hands me the gown which I wrap around my unborn baby and me.

The adventure has begun.

And that is how it feels every year when we pass through the Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God and enter a new year.

This is where anything is possible. It’s so far beyond silly resolutions and high ideals. This is the divine adventure, where God lays the road ahead of us, and we know that we are living out Isaiah 61:2-3. We watch as Luke 4:19 unfolds. We will battle our own godzillas and serpents. We will encounter curmudgeony people who just might become family – by the power of true conversion and the mystery of the family of God. We will visit new places, give birth to new possibilities, wed ourselves to God’s amazing divine plan.

The adventure has begun.

To announce a year of favor from the LORD and a day of vindication by our God; To comfort all who mourn;to place on those who mourn in Zion a diadem instead of ashes, To give them oil of gladness instead of mourning, a glorious mantle instead of a faint spirit. (Isaiah)

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free,  and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.” (Luke)

So go ahead and get excited. Don’t settle for worn out resolutions. Aim high, because with God, all things are possible.