Sometimes, I don't understand.
Why does it seem like everyone around me is hurting and yet, I'm doing just fine?
Looking around me, I see good things and bad things. And, as usual, the bad things tend to appear bigger than good ones.
All around me, there are people hurting, families tearing apart, uncertainty, financial worries, loss of a loved one, and squelched dreams. I see people trying to overcome the storms that threaten their faith.
And for me, I feel like I've never been tested.
Yes, I have experienced some of the aforementioned trials, but never in a way that made me seriously question the faith that I've always been raised in. It was hard, sure, but never quite in the same way I've heard or read about. If life is a road to Heaven, then, of course, I've encountered obstacles on the way. I've tripped and stumbled and it hurts a lot. But through all of it, I've never thought about turning back or finding a new path.
Which leaves me with two possibilities. Either my faith is stronger than I think it is, (unlikely), or the trials I've experienced are as small as I think them to be.
But I feel the question is, Why hasn't my faith been tested yet? Am I not mature or strong enough yet? Am I just not ready for it?
It's not that I'm asking for a catastrophe to happen, but I just want to know how deep my faith truly is. It's hard to measure something if you've never traversed its limits. How can I tell someone how far I can run unless I actually attempt running as far as I possibly can?
But what if I'm wrong? What if I've been looking at the wrong angle at this? After all, it's much easier to be dependent on God when you actually have need of Him. When you lose every shred of security, you have nothing left to get in your way of God. God is our surest refuge, a foundation to stand upon when all others fail. The problem is, we seem to always seek out our Saviour as last resort, a sort of fail-safe measure when everything else fails. God seems to have become our fairy Godmother, a forgotten fancy that appears only when all seems to be lost.
When the storms hit, God becomes a lot more evident in our minds. Great evil requires a greater good to overcome. That's just simple math. But when the sea is calm, we can tend to leave God below in the ship, sleeping undisturbed.
It's not that I'm asking for a catastrophe to happen, but I just want to know how deep my faith truly is. It's hard to measure something if you've never traversed its limits. How can I tell someone how far I can run unless I actually attempt running as far as I possibly can?
But what if I'm wrong? What if I've been looking at the wrong angle at this? After all, it's much easier to be dependent on God when you actually have need of Him. When you lose every shred of security, you have nothing left to get in your way of God. God is our surest refuge, a foundation to stand upon when all others fail. The problem is, we seem to always seek out our Saviour as last resort, a sort of fail-safe measure when everything else fails. God seems to have become our fairy Godmother, a forgotten fancy that appears only when all seems to be lost.
When the storms hit, God becomes a lot more evident in our minds. Great evil requires a greater good to overcome. That's just simple math. But when the sea is calm, we can tend to leave God below in the ship, sleeping undisturbed.
What if the greatest challenge to my faith is not my belief in it, but rather my commitment to it?
One of my favorite aspects of Africa is that it was hard. I saw the good, the bad, and the ugly every day. I saw the beauty of human faith and trust in God and the despair and desperation of poverty. There were things that made me squirm, cringe, and want to turn away. Sometimes, I probably did. But each experience, regardless of whether it made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside or confront me with the reality of human suffering, was a powerful experience. A good experience, not in the sense that it was fun, but that I needed to see this.
In Africa, things challenged me, made me confront the problem of pain, allowed me to see just how much I could take.
Back home, it's not hard. I can take things easy and not many people would even notice. No one begs for my water, I don't have to witness the nature of poverty, I don't even have to take cold showers anymore!
In Africa, all I had to do was shift into neutral and let God push me. I was idling forward. He helped me get started, but now I have to pull my weight. That means work. Sacrifice. Patience. Commitment.
I can't just drift from one spiritual high to the next. I can't just glide along, complacent. If I'm not moving forward, then I'm just going to fall right back to where I started. Perfection is a pursuit of the infinite. We have Jesus as our measure, our role model.
I don't know about you, but that's a very high bar to reach! And while it's one that we can't make on our own, we still have to give it our very best. We still have to work, we still have to suffer. Because if all we're going to do is idle forward,
One of my favorite aspects of Africa is that it was hard. I saw the good, the bad, and the ugly every day. I saw the beauty of human faith and trust in God and the despair and desperation of poverty. There were things that made me squirm, cringe, and want to turn away. Sometimes, I probably did. But each experience, regardless of whether it made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside or confront me with the reality of human suffering, was a powerful experience. A good experience, not in the sense that it was fun, but that I needed to see this.
In Africa, things challenged me, made me confront the problem of pain, allowed me to see just how much I could take.
Back home, it's not hard. I can take things easy and not many people would even notice. No one begs for my water, I don't have to witness the nature of poverty, I don't even have to take cold showers anymore!
In Africa, all I had to do was shift into neutral and let God push me. I was idling forward. He helped me get started, but now I have to pull my weight. That means work. Sacrifice. Patience. Commitment.
I can't just drift from one spiritual high to the next. I can't just glide along, complacent. If I'm not moving forward, then I'm just going to fall right back to where I started. Perfection is a pursuit of the infinite. We have Jesus as our measure, our role model.
I don't know about you, but that's a very high bar to reach! And while it's one that we can't make on our own, we still have to give it our very best. We still have to work, we still have to suffer. Because if all we're going to do is idle forward,
Then we're going nowhere.
And we're going to get there fast.
"What if the greatest challenge to my faith is not my belief in it, but rather my commitment to it?" THIS. Wow, okay, I really love this specifically from this post (I mean, I love all of it, but this really hit me because this is exactly my problem I think?). Like, I have no doubts in my faith, but being committed to it constantly is really hard. "Why does it seem like everyone around me is hurting and yet, I'm doing just fine?" For me, it's kind of the opposite. I mean, there's a lot of people having much, much worse problems, but dealing with anxiety just leaves me so drained and it's hard to remain committed to my faith when I'm just so tired. I mean, I'll make it to mass on Sunday and pray when I remember to, but it's just really hard. I think it should be hard, honestly.
ReplyDeleteYes, exactly. It's so easy to just scrape by on the absolute minimum requirements of our faith. Because I can make my faith so unchallenging it becomes easier just to forget about it. That's my problem, I look around and see people struggling to have faith because of difficult circumstances and I don't have any of that. Perhaps, I've become so focused on that aspect, that I forget that I have to live my faith, not just believe in it. Otherwise, are we really believing in it? If my belief is truly that important, then it should become the center of my life, not just on Sunday Mornings.
DeleteI know what you mean, sometimes we get so worn out, that we're just too tired to make an extra effort. That's why I'm trying to start pulling together a regular schedule, to make sure I'm actually praying daily. (And not just before meals.) If we just leave prayer at the back of our minds, then often we'll just remember it when we're too exhausted to actually just do it. I'm trying to make it a point of praying as soon as I wake up, to offer the rest of the day to God. The thing to remember is that we don't have to jump in the deep end. You don't have to pray three Rosaries, read 4 chapters of the Bible, spend a half-hour in contemplation, and do the entire Liturgy of the Hours. It's alright to start out small. There are many ways that one can take the first step. Let me know if you need any suggestions!
~Thomas
Small steps are a good start, but even taking that first step has always been hard for me with anything. But I think now more than ever I really need to, although honestly I am the worst at sticking to schedules and remembering to do even little things. Sigh. And yes, you have to live your faith otherwise that are we really doing? Noting: "Faith without works is dead" (cannot for the life of me remember the verse, but there it is). (Also if you would rather not clutter your blog comments with this I am contactable by email)
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