“I do my best and bad things still happen to me!”
Just because we follow Jesus Christ and try to be faithful to his teachings that doesn’t mean we will lead a perfect life. Sometimes we think we’re like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz story. All she had to do was click her heels three times and she immediately returned home safely.
Even if we asked the Holy Spirit to make our lives perfect. Again, that wouldn’t make it happen. In fact, it doesn’t even happen to shiny newly baptized babies wrapped in a white gown and bathed in Baptismal waters.
It just does not work that way.
Even if we dress up and look spanking clean to make our first communion, our life may not become orderly with a place for everything and everything in its place. We will still occasionally feel out of sorts!
One day as I was about to enter the church for Sunday Mass, a man yelled, “Father, if Jesus would just fix this world, it wouldn’t be falling into pieces. Why doesn’t he do that? What’s the sense of praying if Jesus doesn’t do his part?”
After two perfectly formed nephews, my sister’s third child was born with spina-bifida. My mother died at the beginning of my priesthood. I was upset at both these happenings! First, I blamed God. Until I realized God sent his son to die on the cross so all creation could more enter heaven. With that thought in mind, I couldn’t imagine this same loving God taking time to do awful things to his creation! It just didn’t make sense. God doesn’t do bad things simply to punish the people. God loved so much.
God came to save us not to hurt us. His whole plan is to take his children to heaven. So why these detours? Why punish my mother by not allowing her to enjoy her son’s priesthood? Or to hurt my two sisters that wanted so badly to be mothers!
It seems sometimes that life comes to us with instructions in a language we don’t understand. Like the directions that came with the electric fan I bought last week. At times like this, we must hold on to this simple truth: That our lives are no worse, or appalling or embarrassing than anybody else’s. And no one has it all together not even Pope Francis.
When we come face to face with life’s messiness we need to accept it. Everybody has some sort of messiness. My mother has this simple advice when bad things happen. 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? She added this: “Then shake the dust from your feet. And trust!
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 endure it.” But first we must accept the stark reality that we all have to get through the confusion. What’s on our side is that we are all made in God’s image and likeness but weakened by our first parents’ sin.
How does God’s creation fare in a broken world? Grace. Grace is God’s life preserver when trouble comes. Grace is freely given to us to help us laugh, smile, heal, and move on. Grace helps us to become more than we are at any given moment.
Listen to Helen Keller: “I am only one person, but still, I am one! I cannot do everything; but I can do something! I will not refuse something I can do!”
