Hurricane Idalia came through our area at the end of August and made for a wet and gloomy day. Even this bird seems like it has had enough of the rain. In fact, from its expression, it looks like it has given up trying to be dry and will just have to live being soaked. Sometimes we feel like this bird looks: “What is the use in even trying? No matter what I do, nothing is going to change.” But, as Christians, should we give up without even trying? Should we give up all hope and resign ourselves to defeat?
In II Timothy 4:7 St. Paul says, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.” Chances are we have not faced the trials St. Paul had to face. In II Corinthians 12 St. Paul tells of the hardships he had to face in proclaiming the gospel message: “Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I passed a night and a day in the deep. Five times at the hands of the Jews I received forty lashes minus one.” Does anyone want to trade places with St. Paul? I doubt it. Yet we all face the hardships of life. As an old friend used to say, “Life is not easy, and life is not fair.”
How, then, are we to manage the trials of life since we know they are going to come our way? Do we just resign ourselves to the fact that they are coming and sit back waiting for them to hit us? Or can we be proactive? Richard Rohr has said that suffering is when we are not in control. Often, when the trials of life come our way, we find out quickly that we are not in control. The trials may have come on suddenly and we may have had little time to prepare. Who or what then is in control? Fate? Chance? An unknown force?
What we need to do in preparing for the unknown and unexpected trials is to always have God in control. If He is in control, then our trials did not surprise Him. In fact, those very trials may be the way He is preparing us to grow closer to Him. Suffering has a way of drawing us closer to God if we let it. But if we fight against it and resign ourselves to seeing it merely as fate, we are defeated before we even begin. In I Corinthians 10:13 St. Paul says, “God is faithful and will not let you be tried beyond your strength; but with the trial He will also provide a way out, so that you may be able to bear it.” This is true even when the trial causes us to suffer greatly. Do we have the faith to give Him total control?
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