"Our belief is that we are saved by the favor of the Lord Jesus..." Acts 15:11
"We must undergo many trials if we are to enter into the reign of God." Acts 14:22
If there was no pain, no suffering, no poverty, no illness, no tragedy, no evil, then our earth would not be earth, it would be heaven. Heaven without earth. As it is, though, we now live on earth, in a very real symbiotic existence, with heaven. Literally, figuratively, geographically, physically, and personally. "He reached to Heaven while He stood upon the earth." (Wisdom,18:16, 1 Chronicles 21:16)
If we really believe that Heaven is among us, around us, within us, how do we reconcile the miserable things in our life with the belief that Heaven itself is reigning right alongside us? How do we fit together that knowledge of God in us, the belief that God will give us good things, the belief that God knows our needs even before we ask, with the misery that is also all around us? How can we say we trust Him to take care of us when we see so much suffering?
What are we supposed to think of Matthew 7:11, "ask and you will receive...If you, with all your sins, know how to give your children what is good, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to anyone who asks him!"? What are we supposed to think then, when after having prayed for protection, the props are knocked out from under us and we are standing in a whirlpool of confusion? What are the people in Haiti thinking now as their buildings have been knocked out from under them in the 2010 earthquake and they are left standing with nothing? Are they supposed to think that somehow it was good for them or it would not have happened?
What about a call in the middle of the night that a child has had an accident? Or what about the struggle to protect our children with the constancy of praying for them, only to find out they have been abused in some way, years earlier, and we knew nothing about it? Are we supposed to think we did not pray rightly? We, as human parents, feel terrible that we did not protect them. Then our thoughts turn to the obvious-- if You, God, give good things to anyone who asks, why did You not protect them? How could abuse be "good" ?
And what about those who, in despair, end their own lives? How are their families supposed to figure that out in relation to God's loving kindness and His ability to give good gifts? How are they ever supposed to get over all the "if only's..." and the inability to understand how it happened?
What about terrible accidents where your child loses limbs, mobility or eyesight? What about the tragedy of a child's death? I don't know.
What I do know is that we live in a world that bears the consequences of human free will and that a lot of the misery we are faced with is because of humanity's poor choices. Perhaps some diseases in our world have been generated because of our inability to cook real food. Perhaps the foods we do prepare have too many chemicals in them. Perhaps we have medicated ourselves so much that we have no resistance to some viruses. Perhaps we have allowed some diseases to get started in squalid conditions in poor neighborhoods or areas in the world because so many use the earth's treasures on themselves and their personal empires rather than helping their poverty stricken brothers and sisters.
This is my attempt to sort out, to make sense of, all the seemingly discrepant statements of God's wondrous protection, with the reality of suffering. I imagine there are some people who never question anything- who would, in fact, feel unfaithful if they questioned God's providence in any way. They are the Job's of the world. For the rest of us, who in our misery ask why- these are my thoughts.
Can our "trials" actually be "favors" of God? Scripture states, "It is He who gives to all life and breath...and everything else." Acts 17:25 "Everything else," would surely include good and bad, happy and sad things that come our way. But why? Why would God, Who gives us good things, allow things which seem so terribly bad?
Can we lump all the pain, agony and suffering in this life, into one big pile and called it "misery?" I don't think so. Rather, I think our miseries can be placed into three envelopes labeled; nuisances, struggles, and tragedies. Why they are allowed and how we are to respond to them is different also.
Nuisances are those things which drive us mad during the day and night. They are the things we talk about with sarcasm while playing "one-up." One person might tell of missing sleep because of a mosquito in the bedroom, the next person one-ups with telling how their child came into their bed in the middle of the night and threw up all over the bed. Another person tells of their errant teen coming in late- or early depending on one's frame of mind.
Nuisances are also all those small irritations we put up with throughout the day...or night. Those things spouses do that seem so silly to us. The way they eat, the way they drive, the noises they make while sleeping, on and on ad nauseam. Crawling out from under our warm blankets and the cold floor in the morning. A cold toilet seat. Stale bread. A pimple. A coffee spot on your new shirt. A slow driver or long light. Oh, we could fill a book with irritations to put in the nuisance category.
Nuisances are fairly easy to deal with in relation to struggles or tragedies. If we look at nuisances for what they really are and crawl on top of them instead of wallowing in them, we are, well, on top rather than under the "garbage." If we wallow in our nuisances and let them fill us with self pity or anger, we stay at the bottom of the self-imposed garbage heap and the nuisance might seem like, or actually become, a struggle instead of just a nuisance.
A nuisance can easily be dealt with by simply saying, "Blessed be God." Just try it. When something irritates you, say these three words and, presto-chango! you have stepped into grace and the whole situation is easier to deal with. In essence, the Kingdom of God has literally come upon you. You open the door, in those words, for the Kingdom to surround you and the situation. You have unleashed the power of all of the Heavenly realm to come to your aid. Not only that, but in opening the door to the Heavenly, the door to evil is closed. That evil that is personified in satan, and who would like to keep us frustrated, irritated and confused. In a second, that flash of the Divine is opened and we step into Grace- and Grace enfolds us.
"He still reached to Heaven, while He stood upon the earth..." (Wisdom 18:16) Think on that for awhile and we can easily visualize, in our spiritually focused mind's eye, Heaven. God, and all of His Kingdom does, very literally, surround us, encompasses the air and the space we move around in, is indeed, in us. I believe it is another dimension. So close, yet mostly invisible.
Mostly invisible. There are times when a spec of something makes us turn to see what is there. Something catches our eye when we are not looking. A flash; a movement. When we turn to look, there is nothing there. Scientists may explain it differently but I think, at those times, we are catching a glimpse of the physical dimension of Heaven. So near, yet seemingly, so far. "The reign of God is already in your midst." (Luke 17:21) When we praise God, in any way, we literally swing wide open, the doors of that dimension.
Even if we don't physically see flashes of light, specs of the Divine, we will be able to say, "Oh my God, You brighten the darkness about me." (2 Samuel 22:29) Our world illumined by, not just a spec of light, but a refulgence of light with each successive nuisance and our ability to praise God in that nuisance. We sharpen our endurance and coping skills using our door to the Divine. The key of that door is "Blessed be God." We might even start looking forward to small struggles just to see and feel God's Divine Presence in our midst.
Struggles though, are those persistent aspects of our lives that take up much of our time, our thoughts, our energy. Trying to keep a job or looking for a new job so our families can have a house and food- a struggle. Holding our tongue while trying to get several toddlers ready to go anywhere- a temporary struggle but one which seems as if it will never end. Putting up with and forgiving our spouses their foibles- a struggle. Searching out God's will in our lives; trying to find our right vocation or trying to guide a teenager - definite struggles.
In essence, a struggle is anything wherein we must end up relinquishing ourselves to God and His grace in order to muddle through with any kind of sanity.
"It was our infirmities He bore, our sufferings He endured." (Matthew 8:17, Isaiah 53:4) Precisely! The nuisances and struggles are allowed in our lives as opportunities for us to literally throw up our hands and say, "Help!" Acknowledging our inability to do things solely on our own, and being willing to listen to, and obey, the Holy Spirit's lead in our life is exactly what we must do.
When we let go of the control of our lives enough to ask God for help, enough to be able to say, "Blessed be God," in the middle of those nuisances or struggles, when we sense the Grace of God, in essence, the reign of God, in a moment of frustration or ongoing struggle, we can actually realize that if there had not been the moment of frustration or the struggle, we would not have asked for, and realized, God's Grace. That feeling of the presence of the heavenly might even make us say, "Gee, if I had know I wanted this, I would have asked for it!" We will finally come to realize that we can actually thank God for everything. Everything. "In all things give thanks." (1 Thessalonians 5:18)
St.Paul did not say, "for when I am powerless, it is then that I am strong," (2 Corinthians 12:10) to be esoteric. He had experienced the power of God so firmly, so often, that he knew this statement to be the absolute truth. It can be for us, too.
Nuisances and struggles are allowed for our own benefit. Mostly. In our cry for help, our acknowledgement of God's Grace, thanking Him for it, allowing His Grace to be our spring board to the top of the garbage heap of our struggles, we learn more about God. We learn about our own inadequacies and we learn to trust. In this, we do become calmer, kinder, and easier to get along with. So, in essence, it is a boon for the rest of humanity too. It is much nicer for those around us when our sour disposition, caused by irritations or sheer struggles, is changed into one of grace-touched peace. But mostly, nuisances and struggles are beneficial to our own soul's work.
Tragedy though, I believe, is for all of us. Tragedies, whether singular, as the death of a dear one, or collective, as in the terrorist attacks or natural disasters, are perhaps allowed in order for the rest of us to learn something. Shared sorrow.
When the Challenger broke apart in mid-air on January 28, 1986, and I saw the two trails of smoke on the television, I was shot through with disbelief. I continued to be steeped in confusion, anger, disappointment, bewilderment and that picture in my mind, for many months. I could not make sense of it. Why, though, had it affected me so personally? I suspect the sudden death of my Dad a couple months earlier, and then this on top of my grief, compounded to make me unaccountably sad. Even still, in 2010, I remember very poignantly, those two accounts, linked together and my singular grief.
But it was not a singular grief. The rest of my family was confused, sad and bewildered on the death of their husband, Dad, brother and friend. And, the whole world was shocked at the death of the seven crew members of the Challenger. In many schools, children were watching because Christa McAuliffe, a teacher, had been chosen to go along. The Challenger disaster was a global grief. A shared grief.
Tragedy is too hard to handle alone. It is broken apart and shared by many or we could not handle it.
How were the families of the crew members supposed to go on living with their inexorable sadness compounded with not knowing what happened in the last seconds or how long the crew members survived.
Surely, next came the anger. With the realization that the disintegration of the Challenger could have been prevented, I imagine the families of the crew members were thrown into not only the sadness of grief, but now the impossible task of trying to forgive those who had not aborted the flight.
In my mind, on a personal level, I was trying to forgive the doctor who was treating my Dad for a urinary infection and was letting him eat fatty foods, rather than acknowledging that all his symptoms were heart related. (The morning I called to see if he could be transported to a larger hospital, my brother came on the line to answer my call only to tell me he had just had a massive heart attack and was dead.)
Did our family learn something, did we get closer to God through our sadness, did someone else get closer to God through my Dad's death? Was something accomplished through his death that we could not see.
Was there some other good accomplished in the Challenger disaster? Was there some greater good that came from it being allowed to happen? Did the whole world learn something? Something shared?
Somehow, we learned to cope.
A friend taught me how to "cope." I have used this phrase as a joke, at times, in the midst of a nuisance. "Oh, I can cope, a friend taught me how." Then I smugly and jokingly explain about the coping saw and how it cuts one board to fit perfectly against the other trim board. You have to position the trim board against the one to cut, trace the pattern of the board onto the new board and, with a very small flexible saw, you very carefully cut the new board. The two boards then jut up against each other very smoothly. A perfect fit.
I think, "Blessed be God," is our Spiritual coping saw. It allows God to help us perfectly butt up against a nuisance, struggle, or shared grief, to meet it exactly, leaving no space for anger, resentment or hatred to build up. We allow God to close the gap, so to speak, and trim our lives out very neatly at the moment. We will not have a lot of frayed edges or splinters hanging out for others to see or feel either. Perfectly coped.
That's a beautiful turn - perhaps God's thaumatrope. Perhaps He sees through a tragedy and, as it is happening, He sees the good that can come from it. If we believe God is our Heavenly Father, if we believe that He will, as a Father, give us good things, if we say that He allows tragedy to happen, then it follows that there must be a greater good to come from anything that seems very tragically hard.
"Blessed be God, Blessed be His Holy Name, Blessed be Jesus Christ, true God and true man. Blessed be the name of Jesus. Blessed by His Most Sacred Heart. Blessed be Jesus in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. Blessed by the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete. Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most holy. Blessed be her holy and Immaculate Conception. Blessed be her glorious Assumption. Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother. Blessed be Saint Joseph, her most chaste spouse. Blessed be God in His angels and in His Saints. May the heart of Jesus, in the Most Blessed Sacrament, be praised, adored, and loved with grateful affection, at every moment, in all the tabernacles of the world, even to the end of time. Amen."
