All creatures look to you

Sorry for the rather prolonged hiatus. I might just be back on track now but I'm not quite ready to promise. I've been flat out sorting out my new flat (!) and getting unreasonably stressed and everything, which meant I had no energy to write, or think. But here's something that came to my attention a while back...

I'm not exactly sure why - maybe because of the Catholic focus on praying to Mary/God for physical blessings, or because in very recent history Chile was a poor country and much of it still is, or because the eclipsing glories of the Gospel aren't well taught - but for whatever reason, people are much more inclined here to give thanks and pray for safety, food, health, those sort of things. It's what most people seem to pray for, most of the time.

It makes me worried about what Christians will do when the hard times come, as Jesus promised they would. I worry that this focus on the here-and-now will make them forget that God is bringing about bigger plans, yet more beautiful things, and they will find themselves unable to trust him when their personal troubles crowd in. I think this is something that my church back home does a good job of preparing its people for. And yet it's not all bad here. Chileans tend to have a fervent belief in God's ability to control life's details and a lovely dependence on him, and that's not nothing, not nothing at all.