No Matter What Condition the World finds itself, God Never Gives Up!
When does spiritual growth happen: is it in our past, present, or future? Where is the most influence on our growth, in the present or the past? I wonder what St. Francis de Sales would say about the past. Francis seems to place more emphasis on the present moments for growth on our spiritual Journey.
Since God made us in his image and likeness, he plays a big part in helping us navigate our life’s journey. Therefore, every experience, past or present, and every person God places in our lives, is the perfect preparation for our eventual future, which only God can see.
What God wants from us is that we try to understand how we got to where we are today, to better shape our tomorrow. If we have to reach back to our past for an event or happening to help us live the present better, then let’s put our trust in God’s hands.
We each have different past experiences, different destinations, and a variety of itineraries. If we never stop to understand them, we lose their meaning and how they can help us live our present better and watch our future unveil before us.
St. Francis De Sales would never want us to revisit the past solely to mire in a past hurt, pain, or failure. Healing a past difficulty, for De Sales, is better done in our time left and never in the time already spent.
Author David McCullough offers this observation about the past: “…history is not about the past. If you think about it, no one ever lived in the past. They lived in the present. The difference is it was their present, not ours. They were caught up in the living moment exactly as we are, and with no more certainty of how things would turn out than we have.”
What keeps us going? It’s understanding how much delight God’s creation is for God. After all, he sent Jesus, his son, to save creation and not condemn it. Sometimes we forget this truth, because many voices, including some preachers, want us to fear creation’s dark side.
They want us to believe that God is unhappy with the way his creation is living and caring for the created world. While this may be partially true because evil does exist in our world, evil can never extinguish goodness completely no matter how small an act of goodness. And it is difficult to measure the impact goodness has on creation.
In Uvalde, TX, the fresh flowers, cards, and crosses labeled with the names of the murdered children, goodness is smothering cruelty. These acts of goodness and love sent for all who mourn the murdered children lift the spirits and ease their pain.
Unlike this act of goodness shown at Uvalde, there are voices that continue to proclaim God’s disappointment in us and in our world. They want everyone to believe that God is watching and has lost hope in us, because of the mess we made of our lives and in the world.
God may be watching us, but God is also watching out for us. God comes to our assistance not with a sigh of weary reluctance, but because he loves us. What delights God the most is coming to the aid of those who might fail or are weak, but who call to him.
We just must read the Scriptures or experience the liturgical year to realize God has a plan for creation, and what lengths God endures solely to forgive us and help us start again. Our recently completed Easter cycle again revealed our annual understanding of God’s hope and deep love for us by sending his son to die and rise for our benefit.
As long as we live and journey in this life, God’s help is with us guiding us through our past, in our present moments, and awaits us in our future. As we change through ongoing conversions, we become more perfect, until the day we come close to God’s perfection in his eternal home.
We are caught up in the living moment exactly as we are,
with no more certainty of how it will turn out than we have.
This is why we trust and depend on Jesus words and promises.
