God is faithful and will not permit you to be tempted beyond your strength.
Scripture for reflection: Luke 24:26
“Did not Christ have to suffer all these things before entering into his glory?”
Father Jean
Baptiste Saint-Jure, S.J. tells us: Do not let ourselves be troubled when we are
sometimes beset by adversity, for we know that it is meant for our spiritual
welfare and carefully proportioned to our needs, and that a limit has been set
to it by the wisdom of the same God who has set a bound to the ocean. Sometimes
it might seem as if the sea in its fury would overflow and flood the land, but
it respects the limits of its shore and its waves break upon the yielding sand.
There is no tribulation whose limits God has not appointed so as to serve not for
our destruction but for our salvation… “Through many tribulations we must enter
the kingdom of God (Acts 14:21).” If you refused to accept these tribulations
you would be acting against your own best interests. You are like a block of
marble in the hands of the sculptor. The sculptor must chip, hew and smooth it
to make it into a statue that is a work of art. God wishes to make us the
living image of Himself. All we need to think of is to keep still in His hands
while He works on us, and we can rest assured that the chisel will never strike
the slightest blow that is not needed for His purposes and our sanctification;
for as St. Paul says, “The will of God is your sanctification (1Thess. 4:3).” (Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence, Tan
Publishing, 1980)
Prayer: Prayer of
St. Faustina
O Lord, You who penetrate my whole being and the most
secret depths of my soul, You see that I desire You alone and long only for the
fulfillment of Your holy will, paying no heed to difficulties or sufferings or humiliations
or to what others might think.
My thoughts: Like
most people in the world, I am spending time this week watching the Olympics. I
was struck by a comment that swimmer Michael Phelps made the other night. He
said that his coach would periodically set him up to face a very big
difficulty. One time the coach even twisted his goggles so that they would fill
up with water as Michael swam. He had to come into the wall by counting his
strokes. In the Olympics in Beijing, sometime later, his goggles filled with
water and could have cost him a medal. From having gone through the adversity
in practice, however, Michael knew to count his strokes, hit the wall first and
win a gold medal. That is the best example of our lives I can think of.
Sometimes we are handed disappointments and setbacks we just don’t understand.
We can choose to get mad at God and blame Him for our problems, or we can
settle down and see what we can learn from them. Like Michael Phelps, we all
want to win the gold in the end. If we let the best coach I know hand us some
difficulties to help us get it, I think we can safely say we will know how to
get to the wall when it really counts.
1 comment:
It is really difficult when God hands you lemons instead of lemonade.
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