April 3, 2020
I’m scared. People are scared. Good, faithful, caring people are scared.
Some are scared for themselves, many are scared for someone else.
And then there are the questions, especially the big one: “Where is God in all this?” Some have decided that there is no God. How can there be? An infant died of Covid-19 last week. An infant. Proof that our prayers are absurd?
Is anybody up there listening?
Maybe that’s the problem.
Looking “up there”.
Looking for a “big miracle”, you know like Jesus’ used to do with fish. Why not do something like that, God? I mean now!
No answer.
Or…
Maybe I was listening for the answer I wanted.
Maybe I wanted the answer I wanted from the God who co-signs my plan for how life is supposed to go.
Maybe I need to listen differently.
Because, in fact, there is only one answer from God.
That answer has nothing at all to do with any explanation of how this is going to work out.
It never has.
The answer from God is a message.
And it isn’t only delivered to “holy people”.
The message is delivered to everyone, not now and then, but quite often.
And if we miss the message (which we usually do), no problem, the message will be delivered again and again until we hear it and as often as we need to hear it.
This morning I picked up my glasses where I had left them on the top of the chest of drawers. The chest is low and black and my room is not brightly lit. I put my glasses on but noticed that the temple on the right side was bent. I took them off and when I did the temple came off completely. The glasses weren’t damaged but the tiny screw that holds the temple to the frame had fallen out. “Damn,” I thought, realizing there’s no way I’ll find that screw. Now what? Maybe the drugstore has one of those glasses repair kits. But these glasses did not use the standard screws in those kits. What about my “back up” glasses? No way.
Then, the thought came to me, “ look on the chest of drawers”. But, I reasoned, “Oh, that would be next to impossible, I mean it probably fell on the floor and there’s no way I’d see it.” But I looked anyway. There, with a little bit of light hitting the black surface of the chest was the screw.
The only message we get from God, the only message we need, the message we get quite often is:
“I am with you.”
There will be no other message.
And as all the saints and mystics and prophets and Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus have told us, as you start to hear it, no other message is needed.