“What we are to put into life will seek us out, it is not for us to seek out our life’s purpose.
Thus you are being faithful if you wait, ready. And then you act when action is demanded of you.”
Reading: St Luke 9, 23-25
Then he said to them all, “If anyone wants to become my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will save it. For what does it benefit a person if he gains the whole world but loses or forfeits himself?
Reflection
How many of us in our earlier years, try to think out the direction our life should take, even the path it should follow? Things like choice of career, what sort of family we might have, where we might travel, and so on. We may start out in our lives with the idea that we can choose the way our life will go.
It is only later on in life we increasingly realise that things aren’t that simple. More and more unexpected and unplanned events happen.
If, as Hammarskjold advocates, we live a “yes” to life and accept what we are presented with, we shall see each event as it happens as a moment for us to do the task we are charged with. What is expected of us is to be ready, waiting, prepared to act and not trying to stick to our own agenda.
When events meet us, when things occur that it is down to us to deal with, when life looks hard ahead, it can seem easier to look for a way out.
“In that faith that is ‘God’s union with the soul’, you are one in God and He is in you, as He is in everyone and everything you meet. In this faith, you go down into yourself in prayer to meet the Spirit, in the obedience and light of union,” said Dag Hammarskjöld.
Archbishop Hammar, of the Church of Sweden, in “Vägen valde dig”, his meditations on Dag Hammarskjöld’s book, wrote:” It is when we stop trying to prove ourselves that we find our freedom, ceasing to be controlled by our own ego, but rather meeting the demands, the tasks that are given to us….”
Prayer
Father, we ask for strength
not to want our own way,
and not to expect our plans to prevail.
We ask for courage to cope with things as they appear,
and fortitude to deal with the unexpected.
Help us not to hide from what you ask us to do,
and help us to give our lives and always to work for the good of others
as we try to do your will. Amen