God’s Difficult Design

by David Lins  |  03/05/2023  |  (Being) Catholic Matters

This weekend, the Second Reading instructs us to “bear our hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God.”

This is hard medicine because it acknowledges that the Lord will not always remove our hardships. It goes on…

“He called us to a holy life, not according to our works but according to his own design…”

Those last three words are crucial: “according to his design.”

He has a design for each of us. A specific plan for our lives. A specific way that we shall be saved, while being his Hands and Feet, as he saves others. We know this is true because of a few words I left out a second ago. “He saved us and called us to a holy life, not according to our works but according to his own design.”

Everything the Father does, everything the Father creates, and everything the Father allows, he can redeem - and/or use - to bring about our salvation. This is not always easy for us to remember.

But wait! There’s more! Every hardship. Every challenge. Every heartache. They can either help carve out deeper empathy, allowing us to speak into other people’s hurts. Or they can fester and cause a solitary bitterness. The choice is ours.

So. What is your greatest burden? To reveal that answer, I’ll ask another: If you could guarantee the Lord would take away one thing to make your life just a bit easier, what would it be?

Whatever that is – I promise that it hasn’t been done, created, or allowed out of divine cruelty. And some extreme cases of things that have been allowed, only happened because the gift of free will is given to all, in all circumstances. As a result, it has been abused by some and used against others.

Know that it breaks your Father’s heart. But because he is God, he can use anything to eventually bring about good, if only we cooperate with him in the midst of our heartbreak, suffering, or confusion.