Category: hope

But always there is hope

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Jeremiah 18.4,6  And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do.  Can I not do with you as this potter has done? says the Lord.  Behold, like the clay in the potter hand, so  are you in My hand.

When a piece of steel has been subjected to such stress that it has lost its power to recover its elasticity, it is said to be distorted.  But it can be made right again.  It is put in the furnace, and so it recovers what it had lost.

Perhaps we have given way under the great stress of temptation and becoming “distorted.”  Perhaps we have lost hope of ever recovering.  “I am like this now; I shall be like this.”

Are we willing to be put into any furnace of God’s choosing if only we may be made fit for His use?  We cannot choose our furnace.  Sometimes it is the furnace of affliction of Isaiah 48.10.

But always there is hope.  Can I not do with you as this potter? asks the Lord.  We are in His hand, and no one can snatch us from His grasp. Our dear Lord says, My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand (John 10.29).

~Amy Carmichael

He seeks until He is weary

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From the beginning of  a newly published book, Amazing Nearness, by the author of The Gift of Faith, Fr. Tadeusz Dajczer:

In my daily life, I am constantly getting lost. Yet that means He can constantly find me.  The more I need Him, the closer He is.  I can ceaselessly discover that in weariness He sought me.  This means loving until weary.  Because of Original Sin He constantly searches for us to the point of weariness and exhaustion, humanly speaking.

In the Eucharistic encounter, Jesus regularly finds me quite lost.   Yet, I am normally lost, needing to be found.  So no need for regrets.  If I am lost I can only be found in Eucharistic love.  He can only find me when I am lost and beginning to search for Him.  Love needs two.  It is a grace always given to me to seek Him through faith, hope, and love.

Fr. Dajczer is here making a reference to the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman in John 4.  “Jesus, wearied as he was with his journey, sat down beside the well.”  Augustine points out that Jesus is weary because He is on a journey to seek us each out.  He is thirsty for our faith.  He knows that we are lost and constantly sets out to find us.  If you feel lost today, take heart that He is seeking you and looking for you.  Let yourself be found by Him.

Cracks filled with gold

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“When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something’s suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful.” — Billie Mobayed

To me, that sounds like a pretty good deal–but, our God, in His incredible love, not only fills the cracks in our lives with gold, but transforms our very lives into a vessel of pure gold.  Amazing love.

“Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day.  For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. . .”  

 

Storms

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Storms.  God’s own fireworks.

He made the darkness his covering,
the dark waters of the clouds, his tent.
A brightness shone out before him
with hailstones and flashes of fire.

The Lord thundered in the heavens;
the Most High let his voice be heard.
He shot his arrows, scattered the foe,
flashed his lightnings, and put them to flight.

 Beautiful words from Psalm 18, one of the psalms from Morning Prayer this morning.  But even more marvelous are the verses that follow:

From on high he reached down and seized me;
he drew me forth from the mighty waters.
He snatched me from my powerful foe,
from my enemies whose strength I could not match.

They assailed me in the day of my misfortune,
but the Lord was my support.
He brought me forth into freedom,
he saved me because he loved me.

In the midst of your storm, God is coming to you.  He is coming to you to save you.  Because He loves you.  Be not afraid of the storm.

“I sat completely alone on the earth”

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I sat completely alone on the earth.
Completely alone.
I saw myself sitting on that great globe.
Then it began.  The constantly recurring
dreadful anguish.
The globe began to spin with raging speed.
The trees cracked.  The mountains collapsed.
The ocean washed up out of the deep.
The wind howled in my ears: Let go!  Let go!  Let go!
I did not let go.  I clung to the earth
with mouth and hands and feet.
For I was afraid.  What will become of me
in this void, in this empty night?
Never, never . . .

Until I awoke.  Wet from perspiration and anguish.

    Now I am thirty-nine years old.  I have let it go.  It was about six years ago.  It happened, not in a dream, but during the day, in the midst of reality, and I felt: now I am finished, now anything can happen.  Sorrow or joy, or anything!  I loosened my grasp.  I surrendered myself to God’s will in something that became increasingly clearer, something that was a matter of life and death.  I was dragged along into emptiness.  I lost my bearings and my foothold.  Such an experience can drive one insane.  One could take one’s own life.  Everything becomes foreign to you.  You really feel you have lost your grip.  Lost.  You must be saved, born anew out of blood and darkness.

    And when it has come to this point, everything becomes new, even a flower, a butterfly, or the billowing of the wind in the reeds.

    But most of all Him.

   It is truly a matter of all or nothing.  It is heaven or hell for a person.  One becomes a person or an inhuman creature.  You stand before the grace-filled choice, particularly after the Incarnation of the Son.  Once!  One realizes later that life was pointing toward this all along, as the Old Covenant toward the New, as the night toward the day, as losing life toward gaining it.

   I write this for those who know it, so that they may rejoice with me in the Lord, and for those who are confronted with it, so that they will not turn back, for the Lord is also shepherd in the night.  He leads you through the dark valleys, and your heart can only come to the place for which it longs through dark valleys.

   A hurricane of love is raging over the earth, with his tugging, luring, shouting: Let go, give in, in God’s name give in, all of you together.

~Flor Hofmans (1925-1964), Flemish priest, professor in theology in Santiago de Chile (quoted in Wilfrid Stinissen, Into Your Hands, Father)

Now we know in part

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Most of the time we walk around thinking we know what’s going on and forgetting that we only “know in part” (1 Cor 13.12), but every once in awhile God gives us a peek into what is really going on.  Here is a delightful story of someone to whom that happened: “When You Get to Turn the Chair Around.”  May it strengthen your hope for those days when you do know that you can’t understand and need to hold on in faith.

You do not suffer in vain

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For those of you who are suffering . . . even in this Easter season . . . here is a word from John Paul II:

You have not suffered or do not suffer in vain.  Pain matures you in spirit, purifies you in heart, gives you a real sense of the world and of life, enriches you with goodness, patience, and endurance, and–hearing the Lord’s promise reecho in your heart: “Blessed are those who  mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Mt 5.4)–gives you the sense of deep peace, perfect joy, and happy hope.  Succeed, therefore, in giving a Christian value to your suffering, succeed in sanctifying your suffering with constant and generous hope in him who comforts and gives strength.  I want you to know that you are not alone, or separated, or abandoned in your Via Crucis; beside you, each one of you, is the Blessed Virgin, who considers you her most beloved children.  (Pope John Paul II, Address at Lourdes, France, May 22, 1979)