LIFE'S HURRICANES

LIFE’S HURRICANES – 27^th Sunday Ordinary Time, Year C

            When people are involved in great troubles, they pray intensely to God. The trouble may be a great hurricane or flood, a fire, an accident, a time of unrest in one’s family and relationships, or within one’s self or work. The trouble may be emotional, spiritual or moral. In such experiences and with determined prayer it is hoped and expected that the Lord will intervene immediately to prevent or clear up the trouble.

            Many life experiences show that the Lord doesn’t always follow our time-table. The various forms of physical, emotional, mental, social, spiritual and moral hurricanes come. The prayer changes as it did for Habakkuk. “How long, O Lord? I cry for help but you do not listen! I cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ but you do not intervene. Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery?”

            It takes time and faith to see how the Lord answers our prayers. Out of life’s hurricanes, new possibilities for our life emerge, which otherwise wouldn’t. A physical hurricane may lead someone to new emotional and spiritual riches. Some unrealized gifts and talents may be developed in an emotional hurricane. A moral hurricane may lead to a new commitment to faith. Without it, someone may have become lukewarm in their moral and spiritual life, which is a more dangerous state and less likely to be recognized and responded to.

            When the various hurricanes of life come, and one feels abandoned and un-responded to by the Lord, one’s faith can be severely tested. It takes courage and faith at such times to hear the Lord saying to us what He said to Habakkuk. “For the vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; If it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late.” At the time, such words can be hard to hear. Some wait for years and decades. In the meantime, many other good things happen as a result of the original “hurricane”, which may be long forgotten.

            If the hurricanes of life were always prevented or their effects immediately removed, many graces and blessings could not flow. Many do lose their patience and even their faith in the experience of life’s hurricanes. “The rash man has no integrity; but the just man, because of his faith, shall live.” The listening and viewing of life’s experiences through the eyes of faith makes a huge difference. “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”

            Besides responding to life’s hurricanes in faith, we are even called to create some spiritual ones. The life of faith is a proactive life and not just a reactive one. That can take courage as well. Paul’s message to Timothy is for us too. “Stir into flame the gift God bestowed when my hands were laid on you. The Spirit God has given us is no cowardly spirit, but rather one that makes us strong, loving and wise.”

            When it comes to doing good and creating “spiritual hurricanes” to move people closer to the Lord, we can be timid, ashamed, cowardly, and weak. Timothy was that way, but he became a great leader in the early Church. Paul’s words moved him, and they can move us too. “Therefore, never be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord…but with the strength that comes from God bear your share of the hardship which the Gospel entails.”

            Acknowledging our need for the grace and strength of the Lord puts us in the company of the early disciples and disciples of all ages up to the present. It takes faith to live the teachings of faith in Christ. Our lack of strength to do it is a constant reminder of the need for greater faith and the strength and power of God’s grace to come to us. The more someone tries to live and share the Gospel, the more they are going to pray the prayer of the Apostles to the Lord. “Increase our faith.”

            Jesus reveals the strength of even a little faith when he says: “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this sycamore, “Be uprooted and transplanted into the sea’, and it would obey you”.

            Life’s hurricanes, those that come to us and those we create, need faith!

Divine Mercy Reflection #1795

“My God, although my sufferings are great and protracted, I accept them from Your hands as magnificent gifts. I accept them all, even the ones that other souls have refused to accept.”