Who claps with closed hands12/20/2023 ![]() The land was a little piece of prairie, with tall grass, wildflowers, killdeer and pheasants. Good Little Girl: “At first, there were no houses across the street from us when we lived in Highland. safely, although I must admit that getting to meet granddaughter Nadia, who arrived in Minnesota some 14 months later, was well worth the trip!” “On the return trip, the pilot announced that he hadn’t actually been able to purchase enough gas to get us to Florida, so we would be landing somewhere else along the way to see if he could get more. I was very relieved to land safely - only to know I would have to repeat this entire ordeal to get home again. I don’t remember much about the actual trip I was too busy having a personal panic attack and checking my watch every five minutes to see how much longer the three-hour journey was going to take - but I DO remember that before we got on the plane, each passenger had to step up, one at a time, onto a huge scale, and then hear his or her weight yelled across the waiting room to a person at the counter writing down all the weights and adding them up to see if we could all get on! I also remember the pilot taping a newspaper across a portion of the windshield to keep the sun out of his eyes. “Flying from Minnesota to Florida was uneventful, but the flight from Florida to Cap Haitian involved the use of a 17-passenger plane. I pray that we will have many reasons to clap our hands today and that we won’t be afraid to do just that.Transplant to Eagan: “Back in 2005, in order to meet our soon-to-be-adopted (well, not all that soon …) granddaughter in Cap Haitian, Haiti, I agreed to fly to Haiti with my daughter and her hubby. I pray that as we go about our day we will be awestruck by all the blessings we have been given. My prayer today is that we can remember all the good things that God has done for us. It’s easy just to sit with my arms folded. It’s easy to take God’s promises for granted. It’s easy to grow complacent and forget what my life was like before I took a radical step towards Jesus. So why aren’t I? If I’m honest, I’d say that sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in the day to day routine of my life and forget all the reasons I have to be joyful. In fact there are so many good reasons I should be constantly clapping! This is also a good reason to clap my hands. This Sunday is the feast of the Ascension of the Lord, the day we celebrate that, “Jesus Christ, the head of the Church, precedes us into the Father's glorious kingdom so that we, the members of his Body, may live in the hope of one day being with him forever.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 666) “Sing praises with a psalm”, he says, “God is King over the nations.” (Psalm 47:7-8) The emotion that the psalmist is trying to convey here is the awe-struck feeling we can have in God’s presence. Clapping, or lack thereof, has the power to convey strong emotion.įor the Lord, the Most High, is awesome. If I strongly disagree with something, I sit with my arms folded and refuse to clap. Sometimes clapping can even annoy me, especially when it goes on too long. There are also times when I clap my hands just because everyone else is clapping. Sometimes it’s a natural instinct, and most times the clapping of hands is accompanied by a smile, an expression of great joy. Or maybe I strongly agree with what I am seeing or hearing, like when the speaker at a conference says something that resonates with me. I clap when someone has done or said something that excites me: my child has taken his first step or my friend got a job that she really needed. When I think about clapping my hands, I immediately think about joy. "Clap your hands all you peoples" (Psalm 47:1)
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