"But I, O LORD, cry out to you;
with my morning prayer I wait upon you.
Why, O LORD, do you reject me;
why hide from me your face?" -Ps. 88:14-15
10/01/2014 Memorial of St. Therese of the Child Jesus, Virgin and Doctor of the Church
Who hasn't felt this way? We wonder if God is there in our struggles. We wonder if we've been abandoned by our Heavenly Father. And if he has abandoned us, then why?
I wish that I could give a 100% perfect answer to this, but I can't, because I am just a man. This does, however, bring us to the first cliche that people use when bad things happen, "Only God knows what his plans are." I say it's a cliche only because it's been said very often. Being a cliche does not mean that it isn't true. I have had some fairly difficult times, not unlike everyone else mind you, but my family has been through some difficult times. During those times I have definitely struggled with my faith. But in the end, when I resolved myself to trust in God and submitted to whatever his plans were for us, things worked out better than I could have imagined. At this point, we have ended up achieving what I thought might be impossible and we get to have my wife stay home and homeschool our two girls. God doesn't always lead us down an easy road, but if we trust his guidance, we often find that he was listening to us all along and we had no reason to doubt him.
This brings us to another cliche, "God is testing your faith." The question at the root of that cliche is, why does God allow bad things to happen? And the answer to that leads us to free will. God, being all powerful, certainly could have created us to love and adore him endlessly, never disobeying him and feeling perfectly happy and content all the time. But he loves US too much for that. If we weren't truly free, then our love for God and each other would mean nothing. We would be like animals only acting on instinct, but we were given an intellect to discern, making our love an act of will so that when we say yes to loving God or each other, then it means something. How quickly do you think your dog would turn on you if you stopped feeding him? That would be the extent of our relationship with God if we were not given the gift of free will. So does God allow evil to happen to test us? No, evil exists because of our fall in the garden. But if you lose faith in God just because bad things are happening to you, how strong was your faith to begin with? That is where your faith is being tested. That's the whole point of the story of Job, which is today's Old Testament reading. Just because God is not the one testing our faith, that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't being tested.
Bad things happen. Sometimes they happen because evil exists and sometimes they just, well, they just happen. Either way, those times test our faith by asking which way we will turn. Because if we take the easy way and turn away from God, it will inevitably lead to more evil. If we turn to God, it may be a harder path, but it will lead to healing and peace.
Two roads diverge before us in these times, and I suggest we try to take the one less traveled by...
God Bless,
P.D.O.
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