We have each been given an inner compass – it’s part of our design to have our truest inner places pointing toward God and the ways we were designed to live in this world. But sometimes our inner compasses can be affected by different influences and experiences, and they can end up pointing us in directions we were never meant to go. Did you know this can happen with actual compasses, too? If a magnet or magnetic metal is near a compass, it can change the direction of that compass’s orientation – even completely reversing the poles, so that it points due south instead of due north! Not very helpful, is it? When the one thing we thought we could rely on to point us the right direction gets all turned around? This can happen in our souls, too. But the good news is that compasses can be recalibrated, properly magnetized so that they point true north again! So, too, we turn our souls to be recalibrated over and over again by the Spirit—even while sometimes, in our disoriented state, we have to rely on external signs for a bit. Perhaps that is the witness of our fellow pilgrims and the “north” of their compasses; perhaps it is a North Star point we can see with our own two eyes, even while things inside feel all muddled up. But, eventually, we can be returned to a place that finds our inner compass aligned with our truest selves and desires – ones connected to God and what God is up to in the world. This has been an incredibly disorienting couple of years for most of us. Our communities have shifted, and we have been more isolated and left to our own sometimes-working compasses more than usual. How has your soul responded in this season (sometimes, in externally-disorienting circumstances, our internal compass can feel off, too; sometimes it’s the only thing that seems to still be pointing true!)? How have you leaned into the process of recalibration – through scripture, liturgy, listening…? What has felt like it has oriented you to true north, time and time again?

Posted by Jamie Bonilla at 2022-01-18 15:48:43 UTC