![]() ![]() We see that great personal tragedies bear not only sorrow but sometimes the seeds of our own resurrections. We do get up, and in the course of a subsequent lifetime, we often walk farther and climb higher than we first imagined possible. We struggled back to our feet by our own courage and determination, but we also felt an empowering touch, as when Jesus reached out to a death-struck young girl and exhorted, “ ‘Talitha cum,’ which means, ‘Little girl, get up!’ ” (Mark 5:41). Indeed, our passage through disappointment and trauma can seem, in retrospect, a season of grace. Like Ignatius of Loyola, whose dreams of a military career shattered along with his leg, we stand up eventually and walk again. ![]() We find new ways to make our way forward in the world. Yet remarkably other doors open and other possibilities emerge. Some dreams are not merely deferred but die. Career plans don’t work out bodies don’t respond as they once did unforeseen tragedies, deaths of loved ones, and marital breakups shatter cherished dreams. Scripture scholars interpret that melancholy verse as the Gospel writer’s attempt to explain Peter’s gruesome martyrdom as something other than a total disaster for the fledgling, uncertain Christian community.īut who hasn’t lived Peter’s mystery in some small way? We find ourselves less in control of our destinies than we once imagined. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go” (John 21:18). We learn the truth of Jesus’ haunting prediction to the apostle Peter: “When you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. ![]() Ciszek eventually learned while sitting in that jail cell in Soviet Russia: we don’t control as much of life as we imagined when we were invincible twenty-year-olds. Perhaps God also speaks through our circumstances, life’s unpredictable, unexpected turns that eventually convince all but the most stubborn of us what Fr. Similarly, the nineteenth-century Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins found God’s voice and presence in countless everyday encounters: “For Christ plays in ten thousand places, / Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his.” I find when I experience extraordinary talent in someone-whether it is playing tennis, singing, preaching, caring for the sick-it reminds me of God’s grace and seems to be a very wonderful way for that person to use his or her time and energy.”Īnywhere that friend sees human excellence devoted to a worthy end, she sees God at work. It comes from a voice ‘in here’ calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God.”Īnd just how might we recognize the voice “in here”? The Protestant minister Frederick Buechner hears God communicating to us through our profoundest human concerns and interests: “The place that God calls us is that place where the world’s deep hunger and our own deep desire meet.” And one of my friends, asked how God might influence our job choices, said she saw God’s fingerprint on our skills and circumstances: “The gifts and talents God has given us are clues as to God’s plan for us.” Another friend spoke similarly, focusing on the passions and interests that not only motivate us to excellence but also touch all those who see our excellence in action: “What fuels one to perform with excellence has a spiritual quality that inspires, nurtures, and sustains one’s work. As the Quaker minister Parker Palmer put it, “Vocation does not come from a voice ‘out there’ calling me to become something I am not. Perhaps, if we attune ourselves to hearing that still, small voice, we will find it whispered all around us and, more important, from within us. Those of us who heard this story as children may remember the poetic King James language for this encounter-Elijah heard God’s “still small voice” (1 Kings 19:11-13). Instead, later on, there was a “sound of sheer silence.” And Elijah heard God speak out of that silence. We’re told that Elijah witnessed a “great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces.” But Elijah perceived that “the Lord was not in the wind,” or in the earthquake or fires that followed. The Hebrew prophet Elijah finds God speaking. ![]()
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