Always remember you are special
Most of us hate to suffer. And it is understandable since we are not masochist.
But sometimes the very suffering we hate is God’s blessing to us.
Let me share with you a story I heard from Sister Briege McKenna. Sister Briege was given the gift of healing by God.
So here is the story.
A man came to sister Briege to ask to be prayed over for the healing of his cancer. So sister Briege did so. Months have passed sister saw the man again. The man thanked sister for her prayers. Sister then asked if he got healed. The man said no. But he was grateful to God for receiving a better miracle.
So sister was a little bit confused so she asked why.
The man told her that before he came to sister Briege, he and his wife was distant to each other. His kids were distant to him as well. Sometime after being prayed over by sister, he was rushed to the hospital.
It was there that miracle happened.
While he was in the hospital, he and his family got close again. It was his hospitalization that healed his family. It was at that painful moment where they became a real family once more.
For the man, to see his family united in love was more important than his health. For him, to feel loved is far more important than to be physically healed.
God used his cancer to unite his family.
So the man thanked God for the miracle he did in his life. He was not healed of cancer but his heart and his family was healed.
Sometimes God permits suffering for the greater good. God does not cause evil, he permits it. God do make straight with crooked lines. We can only look at Jesus on the Cross. The worst thing man did in all of history, we killed God. Yet, it was that very evil that brought our salvation.
Sometimes God blessings can take form of suffering. It is like a child, who has cavities, being taken to the dentist by his father. He trusted his father only to end up in the dentist chair in pain. But the pain is necessary to take the away the cavities.
The father does not enjoy seeing his son in pain, but it is a process that his son needs to take. At that moment the child feels betrayed by his father because he does not understand what is going on.
So are we.
When suffering hits us we feel abandoned or betrayed by God. But like little children we do not see the whole picture, the whole movie of our lives. We see that painful moment at the whole of life itself. God looks out not only for our present but for our future as well.
Painful as it is for God to see us suffer, but if it is the only way to save us, He will endure it.
At the end of our life, when we are facing almighty God, we will see that all our sufferings made sense. And we will be even thankful for those sufferings because it brought us to where we are then.
Heaven.
Have you ever wondered what life really is all about? Have you ever questioned if there is a deeper kind of life than the one you are living?
Most of us seldom ask these questions when life is easy and going our way. We are preoccupied in enjoying ourselves with what we have and we never bother to really meditate about life’s meaning. When everything is all well, we have a tendency to focus on pleasuring ourselves. We have a lot to distract us from asking the big questions in life, like “What is it all about?”
These are where trials can help us.
Trials can be shock therapy to wake us from our self-absorption. When we are stripped of our pleasures and distractions, we are forced to look at life in a different way.
A rich person can fall to the trap of Materialism. His life meaning becomes accumulating objects instead of loving people. Since he has the money to fund his materialism, he can continue to distract himself and live a shallow life till the end of his days. Sometimes loosing his riches is the best remedy for him.
For an addict to be sober he must be cut off from his drugs. It is also true with us. We also need to be separated with the things that feed our disordered desires to achieve sobriety.
If a person thinks that life is all about wealth, and he loses his wealth, he is now forced to look life differently. He is now forced to learn to live life without his precious wealth. Now he is strained to move out from his narrow world and live in the real world. He now starts to search life’s meaning beyond what he always knew.
And those who seek shall find.
If you are experiencing trials maybe God permitted it to wake you up from your false view of life. Maybe it is God’s way to bring back sobriety in your life by cutting of all your distractions.
Many great people have found life’s meaning at their lowest point in life, maybe you are one of them.
Don’t waste your trials. Use them as opportunity to go deeper in life.
Are you living in the past, present or future?
Many of us are burdened, if not caught up with our past. More than the consequences of our past actions, we let the memory of the past drag us down. We like to hit the rewind button in our memory and lick the wounds of long ago. We open up one painful memory and then a sudden flood of other unpleasant memories comes rushing in. And downward spiral we go.
We spend most of our time entertaining our bitterness, pains and disappointments of yesterday. We even spend countless hours just imagining the day we will get our vindication or even vengeance from past hurts. As we waste our time dwelling in our past, our present is wasted as well. And the sad thing is that our today is our tomorrow’s yesterday. Wasting the present now is just adding up to our wasted past. And the vicious cycle continues.
Many of us are also so anxious about our future. While our bodies reside in the present moment, our mind has time traveled years from now. We spend much time being worried and gloomy to things that has not happened yet. We are so absorbed in the “What Ifs” that we forget the “What nows?”
Our present also affects our future very much. To have a better tomorrow is to have a better today. Our actions today will greatly affect our future, good or bad. To waste your time today being anxious about tomorrow is to waste the opportunity to improve your tomorrow.
Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Mt 6:34
To live life is to live in the present moment. The past is dead and the future is yet unborn. The key to healing the past and having a hopeful future lies to what you will decide to do NOW. Now is the only thing we really got. If you waste the present moment by dwelling in the past or being anxious about the future, you end up loosing everything.
The past belongs to God’s mercy, the future to His Providence and the present to His Love. To live in the present moment is to accept and experience God’s love here and now.
Today is your tomorrow’s past.
The way you live today will make your tomorrow better or bitter.
Today is where you are.
Are you there?
The word “success” seems to be always in the air. Are you one of those who are trying to catch it? Grasp it? Breathe it?
The modern man seems to desire success more than ever. He has pursued it with much zeal and passion. He has gone to a lot of sacrifice in the name of “success.”
But only a few actually thought about the success they are pursuing. Most of us pursue success and not really have a clear end goal.
Why I am doing this? Why am I seeking success? Questions few actually ask and meditate. To fail to ask this question is to waste a life time of effort.
In us, lies an inherent longing for happiness, joy and eventually eternal bliss. God has left this desire for joy in our soul so that we will seek him, for only He can fully make us happy. He is the eternal bliss Himself. Look into yourself and you will see that most of your actions are fueled by the desire for joy.
When we look at it, we pursue success to be happy. Success is just the means to find joy. Some say that they pursue success to be fulfilled, but even fulfillment is accompanied by joy. That is how you can say to yourself you are fulfilled, when you have a sense of joy in you.
Our problem today is that we have sought the means and not the end. We have pursued success for its own sake. We seem to be obsessed with the process and not the product. We sought wealth crazily only to find in the end that our possessions did not make us happy. At that point we are left with the question “What now?” It is a question that has driven many to despair.
To try to be successful for the sake of “being successful” is to have an unsubstantial goal. Success is the process of buying the food, not the food itself. To get stuck in the process of buying the food is to end up hungry.
Being an accomplished person is not as the same as being a successful person. Hitler was able to accomplish to move Germany to war and kill millions of people. I have not seen Hitler’s name in any “success” books.
Can you consider a miserable person successful?
If you end up miserable in the process of pursuing success, then you just have defeated your purpose. All your accomplishments will mean nothing if you are not happy. You might have the resources to numb the pain, but it does not take it away.
“What profit a man to gain the whole world and loses his soul?” Jesus said.
Success is a tool for joy. It is a tool for love as well, for only love can bring us everlasting joy. If you really want to be successful in this life and the next, then you must make love your end goal.
If loving God and loving your neighbor is the motivation and end goal of your pursuit for success, then your success will be substantial and joyful. It is a success that you can take with you on the next life.
So what is your reason in pursuing success?
We live in a consumerist world where more is merrier and big is better. We believe happiness is all about the glimmer and the glamour, the excitement and the thrills.
People seem to jump from one sensation to the next in search of joy. From shopping to clubbing, parties and vacations, we seem to never get enough of them. (By the way it is amazing that people who take vacation these days need another vacation to recover from their so called vacation.)
But are we happy with what we have? Have our activities brought us joy or just plain fatigue?
The problem of looking joy in these things is, like getting drunk, the feelings are all gone the next day we wake up. And like a drunk, we start to go again in a spree. And the futile cycle goes on and on.
We all know that worldly things can never give us lasting happiness, but we all want to prove it ourselves.
And so we waste our time.
In the end, we waste our life.
So where can we find joy?
It starts with a “J” and ends in “us”.
Jesus.
Jesus is our joy, in this life and the next. But Jesus too is our guide in finding joy. His life is map to finding real and (ever) lasting happiness.
Together with the Resurrection, Christmas is the most joyful event in history. It is when Divine Joy became flesh and dwelt among us.
So how did Divine Joy entered our world?
He did not enter the world in wealth, power and privilege. He entered poorly and humbly. The shepherd and the wise men did not found joy in the castle of Herod, but in a cave out of nowhere. They did not saw Joy wrapped in gold but in swaddling clothes. Joy is found where you least expect it.
Real joy does not come from stuff-ing yourself, nor going from one high to the next. You could have traveled around the world and only have fatigue to show. Real joy is much simpler, much closer. It is close as your neighbor. Joy is found where you least expect it.
Joy is found in doing the simplest act of love. Joy is to feed a hungry child, to visit the old and abandoned or to comfort the sick. The most joyful people I know are those who have chosen to dedicate their lives to the forgotten and powerless. Their life did not revolved in satisfying themselves but bring joy to those they serve. And amidst all the poverty and suffering they deal with everyday, they have found joy. And it is a joy that the world cannot give. Joy is found where you least expect it.
Joy is found not when you “take em’ all” but when you “give em’ all”. The more you grab joy for yourself, the more you lose it, the more you give it away, the more it comes to you.
So find joy in love and love with joy.
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