A while ago, I wrote my favourite blog post. It has since become the
most popular post on this page (please note: by this I mean more than 3 people
have actually read it, and as far as I’m aware I haven’t been excommunicated as
a result…).
I finished the post with these words:
“Tell Jesus about your lack of wine, your blindness, your lamentations, your sufferings and your burdens. Offer up to Him what cripples you and know He will fix it… be audacious, expect miracles.It will change your life.”
Allow me to take it a little further (or backwards…
or something… hear me out).
I know God has wonderful plans for me – ‘plans to
prosper me and not to harm me, to give me hope and a future’ (Jeremiah 29:11).
I know that Jesus has my back. I know that He wants more wonderful things for
me than I could ever dare dream of. All of this I know, so if you’re still
reading and expecting me to say that all of my past words were simply naïveté, I’m
sorry to disappoint you – I still vehemently hold that hope is a virtue.
I will say this though: for the last little while, I’ve
been wondering – are we expecting miracles or fairytales? Are they two
different things?
My main gal St. Therese of Lisieux tells us with her wonderful, enviable
simplicity that “our desires are not fancies.” Looking back on my own life, I
remember one occasion where I truly felt that the King had truly satisfied even
the least desire of my heart. I was in Sorrento, Italy, and having been away
for almost 7 weeks, was feeling very homesick. That Sunday morning, I left my
travel buddy asleep and walked to the closest Catholic Church for mass,
fighting tears. I walked into the Church of Santa Maria Della Grazie ("Holy
Mary of Grace"), where, during communion, 7 elderly Dominican nuns
(some too frail to even walk), started singing one of my favourite hymns. Suddenly,
as I sang along in my own language, I felt like I was home. Jesus, my Lord, my
God, my all.
However, as much as that experience and many others have given me the
audacity to ask great things of The Lord, where is the fine line between ‘the
king satisfies even the least desires of our hearts’ and ‘life is not a
fairytale?’
Reflecting on this as of late, all that came to mind was the man, who
upon falling into a well, had faith that God would get him out. Several people
came, offering him a way out – all of their attempts to help denied when the
man said that he was relying on God to get him out. He drowned, and when facing
judgement, asked God why He didn’t pull him out of the well. God’s reply, of
course, was that He had sent several people to get him out, but they had been
rejected because the man had been too stuck on how HE wanted God to save him
and could not see past his own idea of what being saved was.
Sometimes we are just like that man. Sometimes, we ask Jesus for
something, expecting a miracle, then are perhaps too blind to recognise when He
grants it. Sometimes we don’t know if it’s really what we need because we are too
stuck in our own world and too fixated on our own (perhaps shallow) desires to
see that God isn’t necessarily satisfying our most immediate desires (to
immediately teleport us out of the well), but, like the loving Father that He
is, is instead fulfilling the deepest desires of our hearts (freedom), even if
we don’t know it yet.
Let’s make this as simple as possible. Luke 11:10-11 tells us:
“… everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one
who knocks, the door will be opened. “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a
fish, will give him a snake instead?”
Imagine me asking God for a pizza. Out of nowhere comes a pizza – well,
sort of. The pizza is cheeseless. Now, if my short time in France taught me
anything, it’s that life is happier with cheese in it, so, for the time being,
let’s call this half a miracle. I may give the pizza back and say ‘I know you
can do better. I expected a miracle. This is OK I guess, but could you send me
one with cheese next?’ What I seem to have forgotten, however, is that God is,
first and foremost, my Father. He knows that as a woman of Middle Eastern
descent, lactose and I don’t get along all that well. God is the cheeseless
pizza chef – the chef who gives me what I need and not necessarily what I
immediately want, ensuring both effective digestion and my lasting happiness.
Excuse the psychobabble. My point is this: real faith isn’t just expecting
miracles, it’s expecting, trusting in and relying on God’s miracles and not our
own. It’s trusting that dreaded answer given to you by Jesus: that voice crying
out to you despite your best efforts to silence it.
This is where I'm thankful for my friends. They know me, and they encourage
me to ask the Lord what He wants of me and trust that He will make His answer
clear. I am thankful for their advice, their meanness, their softness, their
clarity. I would not deserve them if I lived 300 years. They taught me to
pray until God can no longer hold back His peace
from me – to storm Heaven until Heaven comes to my help. Then, when things get EXTRA crappy, they climb into the well with me, pull me up onto their shoulders and remind me that things really aren't that bad as long as I have people I love beside me.
As difficult as some situations are, I pray that I never accept something
I shouldn't because I'm afraid that’s all God has in store for me, and I also
pray that I accept, with gratitude and a heart full of joy, the gifts God has
given me.
Lord, do not allow my pride and shallow desires stop me from recognising
the miracles all around me. For this, I pray.
Santa Maria Della Grazie, Sorrento Italy. |