A priest spoke last week about what God does and doesn’t do. He told a story. A little girl had a doll with a broken leg. She prays over the doll. Prays intensely for God to fix her doll’s leg. Her older brother chides her saying that “God doesn’t do that”. But the girl insists, God will fix her doll.
Well, this week, we lost a car key. It was a big problem in our daily lives. We looked everywhere for the key. We looked a few places the key could never be. We retraced our steps. We tried the intuitive techniques. We prayed and prayed and looked and looked. We called to St Anthony. The parable from mass came to mind in a big way. God doesn’t find car keys.
Last week, I got news that I was passed over for a job that I very much wanted; a job I believe I am well suited for; a job my talents would serve very well. I worked on my interview skills and concentrated on my presentation and prayed for God and Spirit to walk with me through the difficult, stressful, scary process. And I did not succeed. Perhaps, God doesn’t do that either.
These minor frustrations seem major when I am face to face with them. I feel myself crying in the dark wondering: just what does God do?
This is contempt but this very line questioning serves to strengthen my faith.
Now, I know several answers to my own questions. As Job discovered, we cannot know the mind of God. It is not our human place to understand an answer to ‘why?’. The reasons the world works the way it does is not for us to know or understand. I cannot see all ends, nor fathom all possibilities. I know that.
I understand the elements of empowerment. To fully flesh out an empowered prayer involves sacrifice, need, commitment and envisioning, like the law of proportionality. I understand that these elements were more or less absent from such trivial prayers as for a lost car key of for a job promotion or a broken toy. It feels that some of these smaller life problems are more stubborn to deal with that the larger injustices.
It is hard to see how ones destiny fits into these small dilemmas. These minor twists and turns seem to unimportant or insignificant to factor into the larger path of someones life. But I try to reconcile the lessons in these occasions. I learned to ask, “What is this teaching me?” or “What can I learn from this?”.
I fall back on my practice of looking deeply. I have integrated this practice for a few years now. I try to sit and breath and calm myself to look deeply into a situation. So like the many questions I have raised, I have no answer, only a practice and an effort toward deeper understanding and self improvement.
I do not know what God does. I cannot see or understand how all this Spirit stuff works. It is enough for me to know that I believe that it works and that I am part of it all. I will not make a list of I believe statements here. For now it is for me to release and breath and take the next step with faith and prayer and love.
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