Invitation to Harmony

In 2024, God invited me to be bold. When I started the year, I thought that the invitation to be bold was about taking audacious steps out of my comfort zone. And in some ways, it was. After all, being bold led me to say many courageous yeses over the last 12 months, including one to fly to Indonesia in the service of the mission of Jesuit schools.

But despite the amazing blessings that came from these bold steps, I discovered over time that the invitation to be bold was less about each individual step out of my comfort zone and more about God inviting me to do whatever was necessary to accept fully the person God created me to be. It was about taking the bold chances that helped me recognize, appreciate, and develop the unique gifts God gave me so that I might offer those gifts courageously in service of others. The invitation to be bold awakened in me a deeper love for myself and for God as well as an insatiable desire to go all in to wherever God was inviting me to go.

My living into this invitation had its drawbacks, though. I found myself over the course of the year saying a bold yes to everything that even tangentially connected with my deepest desires. In reflection over all these bold yeses, I realized I was not exercising the freedom of letting go of the commitments that did not match my desires or the person God created me to be. The invitation to boldness filled me with incredible joy, but it also left me a little disjointed as the end of the year approached. Despite my increasing desire to go all in, I found I was still holding fast to the desire for God to make the journey easier and to wrap up my future in a pretty little box and place it under the tree as the ultimate prize for all my bold efforts.

That, as you may expect, did not happen. So in December, during my morning prayer on the way to work, I asked, not hiding the uncertainty in my voice, “What’s next, God?” The invitation came almost immediately. Just one word rang out like someone had spoken it aloud over the din of the traffic outside my windows: “Harmony.”

“Wait, what?” I said. “What do you mean by ‘harmony’?” God did not respond. Not sure I liked this invitation, I set it aside for a couple of weeks before I finally decided to explore what it might mean. I started by looking up the definition. After reading through a couple of definitions about music, the third one said, “harmony: the quality of forming a pleasing and consistent whole.”

I let those words roll around in my head and heart for days. I thought about how I felt as the year was ending. In some aspects of my life, I felt great consolation, but in others, I felt quite the opposite. I recognized that despite saying to God over and over again, “I am all in,” I was not yet exercising the freedom to do so. Praying with this invitation to form “a pleasing and consistent whole,” I felt God acknowledging the challenges I brought up of exercising true freedom, especially as someone with a family to consider. I also felt God’s immense patience with me as I wrestled with accepting this particular invitation. Still, God remained persistent in inviting me to harmony as an opportunity to increase gradually in the freedom necessary before I can really go all in.

So, this year, I am taking up God’s invitation to harmony by reflecting daily on the following questions:

• Are my words and actions in harmony with whom God is calling me to be in all areas of my life?
• Are the things I dedicate my time and energy to in harmony with my deepest desires?
• Am I accepting dissonance in my life, because I’m too afraid to seek boldly the harmony God desires for me?
• Where is God inviting me to increased freedom so I may form a “pleasing and consistent whole”?

I am hoping that this reflection will take the lessons of 2024 one step further for me. I am praying that I may be bold enough in 2025 to allow the various aspects of my life to blend together into a more seamless and beautiful harmony.

What is God inviting you to this year? Will you take a chance and go all in?

Photo by Marija Zaric on Unsplash.