Dealing with our problems
We will always have difficulties in life. They are unavoidable. They come with the limitations of our human nature and aggravated by its condition of woundedness. Usually they come as small disappointments and frustrations, little failures and setbacks we meet every day. All of them, more or less, manageable.
But they can also be big ones that can plunge us into deep, long-running crises of fear, anger, anxiety, hatred and despair. Cases of unsolvable predicaments, at least, humanly speaking.
We have to be ready for them and know not only how to deal with them but also how to derive something good from them. In these instances of the hard predicaments, for example, when we seem to be at a loss as to what to do, we should just see at what God does, after we have done all things possible to solve our problems.
We need to trust in God's providence and mercy. We have to learn to live a spirit of abandonment in the hands of God. Yes, if we have faith in God, in his wisdom and mercy, in his unfailing love for us, we know that everything will always work out for the good. If we are with God, we can always dominate whatever suffering can come our way in the same manner that Christ absorbed all his passion and death on the cross.
Let's always remember that God, in his ineffable ways, can also talk to us through these crosses. In fact, he can convey precious messages and lessons through them. It would be good that we have a theological attitude toward them, and be wary of our tendency to react to them in a purely human way, based only on our senses and feelings and on worldly trends.
We have to be quick to discern what God is telling us through them. Let's be quick to see in these problems golden opportunities to receive more graces and other blessings from God. These graces and blessings can deepen our love for God and neighbor, enrich our understanding of things, occasion the birth and development of virtues. They can truly do us a lot of good.
Thus, people who know how to suffer, bearing their suffering with Christ, are effective in conveying to us sublime and divine messages. They are the most credible people who can surprise us with their deep insights and understanding of our life and the world in general.
This was what Pope Francis intuited when he saw thousands of people who withstood the rains and wind, the under and tiredness just to be with him during his pastoral visit to our country. The sight was so powerful that he was convinced, according to him, that God was telling him something important.
On this, St. Paul has something interesting and relevant to say. "In everything, God works for good with those who love him…If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son but have him up for us all, will he not give us all things with him?" (Rom 8,28ff)
It would be good if we have this conviction in our mind and heart so as to avoid getting unnecessarily bothered by our problems. Instead, we should see in them opportunities rather than problems, blessings rather than misfortunes. And so we would be filled with confidence and serenity, hope and optimism.
With this mind, we can easily be patient, knowing how to unite our sufferings with the redemptive passion and death of Christ. Our problems acquire great meaning, and can strike us as something to welcome and to be thankful for, not something to run away from.
With this attitude toward our predicaments, we can easily move on, without getting unduly entangled by them. We can easily ride them out, never mind what effects and consequences they may have in the other aspects of our life.
Our problems can actually lead us to live our life with God, which is what proper to us. Understood in this way, our problems are actually God's blessings for us. No wonder, saints and holy men and women through the ages have considered the cross as something lovable, not hateful.
We certainly have to make some adjustments in our understanding and attitude towards our unavoidable problems. Our attitude towards them should go beyond what our senses, feelings and our other human powers can handle. We have to allow God's ways to work in our life.
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