There are moments in time when one suddenly looks around and realizes that God has given one beautiful gifts, not the least of which is the gift of life itself. Then, one realizes that all this goodness is extraordinarily fragile. This realization is the highlight of the contrast between good and evil. The lovely life God has given me in this peaceful place, little St. Leo, Kansas, with a husband who is an excellent man, and two sweet little girls...it's so fragile. How unfortunately easy it would be for an over-zealous, too powerful government to strip our rights away: rights to faith, rights to farm, rights to live as we wish and as we ought. How easy it would be for God to call one of us home, shaking the foundations of our family, perhaps to the dust. And how easy it would be for me to despair as I immerse myself in such worries.
It's too easy to fall into the trap of despair in a world that has been despairing for so long already. What an amazing thing that God has fully revealed Himself to us in His Son, and yet the world shuns Him and still despairs! But I am at least guilty of the anxiety that easily leads to despair if not checked, and I must look out of myself to the Grace God has given us to overcome it...indeed, I do not overcome it, but He does it for me!
Learning to trust God has been perhaps the most difficult task of life. It requires an imitation of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane: "My Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from me. Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt." We must trust that, if the Lord acts in a way contrary to the known desires of our hearts (I say "the desires that we know" because there are many that we do not know, that have not yet come to the surface of our heart knowledge), that His Will is still our ultimate happiness, and that He will bring about a greater good, whether through grace or refining fire or something that we do not yet understand. We who are finite beings cannot grasp the infinite. "Eye has not seen, ear has not heard what God has ready for those who Love Him." So I will love Him and make every effort to trust Him, to not let myself sink into the despair of worry and fear, no matter how awful the world gets. And I will hope: I will hope that one day I and all who I love will be truly happy, truly free, truly at peace...even if I have to wait until Heaven until we get to that day. God's Will be done. Fiat.m
The world is an uncertain place; the only certainty is God's love, and that we can only know by grace. In these moments in the internal war against fear, I sometimes find my faith flagging, dropping to the ground as though it has run one race too many; and I am left with only Hope. It is the Hope that sustains me and drives me onward. It picks my faith up out of the dust and drags it forward a few steps further. It lifts my head to look around at what God has given me again, and be thankful for it, despite...or maybe because of it's fragility. The words of the sufferer Job come to mind: "The Lord hast given and the Lord hast taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!"
