Tis a fact that by nature, humans need to control. Indeed, in some areas of life that need is justified. We are charged with the responsibility for our finances, our children, our personal choices both moral and spiritual. These are in the purview of our control.
Still there is a point in which, after due effort we need to trust and place it all in God’s Hands. We have prayed for America to return to it’s spiritual roots. Now we see the economy slowing. If we think about it, that is an answer to our prayer: people must now spend less on distractions and make more prudent choices in their lives. Like Jean Pierre de Caussade S.J. who wrote the Abandonment to Divine Providence, we must exercise our prudence to discern that which we have free will over and that which we must abandon to God’s Timing and Will.
We pray for other people and it seems their lives are getting worse after prayer. Consider the notion that tis a crisis that will convert them back to God and that your prayers are being answered. Some people need small nudges to return to God; others need a shove; still others need a cattle prod to get their attention. God knows what they need. We cooperate by our prayers and sacrifices for them.
God indeed, answers prayer. It may not be OUR solution, our idea of timing, nor even the answer we want. Still, He answers prayer.
1 John 5Let us trust in God and pray that we ourselves, have no need of the cattle prod.
13 These things I write to you, that you may know that you have eternal life, you who believe in the name of the Son of God.
14 And this is the confidence which we have towards him: That, whatsoever we shall ask according to his will, he heareth us.
15 And we know that he heareth us whatsoever we ask: we know that we have the petitions which we request of him.
That’s me away then.
3 comments:
I have at times been one that God needs to slap on the head to get my attention!
Such apt and timely words you speak. I'd been thinking along these same lines as I watch what our nation goes through in a slowing, down-turning economy. Indeed we pray for our nation to return to God (for a revival even!), and sometimes it just takes things like this. God is listening, God is acting; that we must surely trust. And we must also keep praying that the things He does to get our attention will really draw us to respond.
God's grace,
Michele
Yes, sometimes it is very hard to see your loved ones fall and know that God might very well be letting them hit rock bottom because that is the only way that they will change.
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