Living Monstrance

Right now, my mother has been at home struggling with cancer.  There have been ups and downs, good and bad, but we are all making it, and the Lord is doing great things in our midst.

One of the problems we face is her eating.  Her appetite hasn’t been good, so we have to be creative with ways to get food past her appetite and taste meters.

Well, one day back when she was in the hospital, a nutritionist stopped by.  My brother and I, being “competent” men, thought, “What’s she going to tell us that we don’t already know?”  But afterwards, I thought, she’s a gift - it’s good to listen to what she has to say.

So I went back to her and listened to her.

We talked about my mother’s situation and what we were doing, and she asked if we had tried smoothies.  “”Smoothies!” I thought, “That’s right - I used to make those a lot - I completely forgot about them.  What a great idea!”  She described some new products that basically compress a whole ton of calories and protein into a little, tiny, tasteless liquid.  “You could put that in the smoothies.”  In fact, she gave me a whole list of different ingredients and proportions to make.  “Wow - thank you - this is great!”

Well, when we got home, we started making these smoothies.  We ordered the little, tiny tasteless fluid on the internet.  We started blending anything that we had - strawberries, bananas, blueberries, cantaloupe, Ensure, milk, ice-cream, yogurt, you name it, mixing and matching depending on what we had.  Before, we couldn’t feed her anything - now it seemed like we could feed her half the fridge.

Then the final taste test came:

“This is delicious!  What do you call it?”  “It’s a Concoction.”

It has a name: Concoction.

Now, every day, we take whatever we’ve got, along with the little, tiny tasteless liquid, and make a Concoction.  When she gets on the phone, she tells everyone about the Concoction.  Even the rest of the family drinks the Concoction.

Now, here’s the point.  What if I stayed with my self-righteous, know-it-all attitude?  What if I never listened to what the nutritionist had to say?  What if I never accepted this hidden, little gift, and said a little yes?  What if I never went back to her?  I think I know:

No Concoction.

How important that nutritionist was!  How important was my little yes!

“[The Kingdom of God] is as a grain of mustard seed: which when it is sown in the earth is less than all the seeds that are in the earth: and when it is sown, it grows up and becomes greater than all herbs and shoots out great branches, so that the birds of the air may dwell under the shadow thereof.” (Mk 4:31-32)

Do you have an open heart?  Are you willing to say yes to little things?  It’s then that the Lord can do great things with you.