I do my best and bad things still happen to me!
Just because we follow Jesus Christ and try to be faithful to all he taught doesn’t necessarily mean we will lead a perfect life. Sometimes we think we’re like Dorothy from Oz and if we click our heels three times, we would leave a tough situation and return home.
Even if we call on the Holy Spirit asking to it make our lives perfect again, it won’t make it happen. In fact, it doesn’t even happen to newly baptized babies wrapped in white gowns and bathed in baptismal waters.
Even if we dress up and look spanking clean to make our first communion, our life won’t become orderly and tidy with a place for everything and everything in its place. We will still occasionally feel out of sorts!
It just doesn’t work that way.
One day as I was heading into church for Sunday Mass, a man yelled, “If Jesus would just fix this world, it wouldn’t be falling apart.” Why doesn’t he do that? What’s the sense of prayer if Jesus doesn’t do his part?
After two perfectly formed children, my sister’s third child was born with spina bifida. My mother died at the beginning of my priesthood. I was upset at both. At first, I blamed God. Until I realized God sent his son to die so I could get to heaven. With that thought in mind, I couldn’t imagine that this loving God would take time to do awful things to me. It just didn’t make sense. God doesn’t do bad things simply to punish us.
God came to save us not hurt us. His whole plan is to get his children to heaven. So why these detours? Why punish my mother by not allowing her to enjoy her son’s priesthood? I know God doesn’t do these hurts to those he loves. He just doesn’t!
It seems sometimes that life comes to us with instructions in a foreign language, like the instructions that came with an electric fan I bought at Lowe’s last week! What we must do is hold on to the truth that our life is no worse, or appalling, or embarrassing than anybody else’s. And no one has it all together, not even Pope Francis.
In life, we will come face to face with the confusion and messiness of life. We must accept it and handle it. Everybody has some sort of confusion and messiness. It just is!
My mother’s advice was simple: When bad things happen to us, we can’t waste time asking why. We need to pause and ask: Now that this has happened to me, how do I get through it?
Jesus gave us his wisdom on this topic. He traveled over many potholes in his life time. In Matthew (10:16-23), Jesus sends his disciples to their first speaking tour with these words, “They will hand you over to death and scourge you. You will be hated because of my name. But whoever endures to the end, will be saved.” Jesus gives this remedy, “When they persecute you in one town flee to another. Then shake the dust from your feet.”
Jesus doesn’t want us to run away. He wants us to stay and ask for help. His disciples stayed because their bond with Jesus was strong, a bond based on belief, trust, and love.
Remember Jesus asked the apostles after preaching a tough session, “Will you leave me too?” Peter replied, “Where shall we go Lord? You have the words of eternal life.” And so, the Church grew!
In every life we find stones to walk on or potholes in our path for part of our journey. All lives have a bit of Calvary in its asphalt. However, the purpose of our lives isn’t simply to clean up or understand our mess.
It is life’s reality that storms unexpectedly happen, and with God’s help either God will take away the pain or give us the grace to accept it. But first we must accept the reality that we all have to get through the confusion and messiness. What’s on our side is that we are all made in God’s image and likeness, weakened by our first parents’ original sin, but strengthened by the death and resurrection of Jesus.
How does God’s creation make it in a broken world? Grace heals our brokenness. Grace is God’s life preserver when trouble comes. Grace is freely given to us to help us again laugh, smile, heal, and move on. Grace helps us to become more than we are at any given moment.
It’s not that we are bad. It’s that God is offering us something better than who we are at any moment through forgiveness, mercy, and reconciliation. God wants us to be faithful no matter the irregular condition of the road we are traveling no matter how many potholes we encounter. It reminds us that goodness grows in the wildest of places.
