God Gives The Best

"What father among you, if his son asked for a fish, would hand him a snake? Or if he asked for an egg, hand him a scorpion? If you then, evil as you are, know how to give your children what is good, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!"

God gives us what is best for us, which is not necessarily what we ask of Him. Fr. Philip Heng,S.J. said in his homily this evening that if God were to answer all our prayers, we will have a lot of conversions to the faith but none who really take an interest in the relationship with God. All will be superficial believers. Truly, by our infinite wisdom, in the absence of proper guidance, we will tend to choose things we want that are superficial and materialistic, e.g. wealth, luxury, good looks, etc. All these do not benefit us one bit. For us to accept God's will, which entails we will not get everything we want, we need to acknowledge our limitations and be humble about it. Only then can we allow ourselves to trust in what God wills for us and accept with open and obedient arms what He gives us in our lives. 

If we trust that God loves us, then we will trust that what He gives to us are the best we can have. Not perfect but the best for us. Many times in life, we want what is perfect - the perfect spouse, job, house, car, parents, siblings and thus, expect everything to be in harmony. But humans are imperfect and so are the things produced by humans. Expecting our parents to never argue or fight is not realistic. Expecting our spouses to love us the way God loves us unconditionally and infinitely is asking them to be God. It just cannot be. 

Look at our parents. No matter how imperfect they are, God has given them, of the millions and billions of parents in the world, to us. He probably went down the long list of names of parents before He picked our moms and dads for us. Look at our siblings. No matter how many times they have said nasty things to us or they were our parents' favourites over us, God still gave them, over none or all the other people in the world, to us. He must have hand-picked them cos they were just the best for us. Hard to believe? For many families, where sibling rivalry destroyed the peace of their families, it is hard to believe or comprehend. But to trust is to trust 100%. Trusting 99.9% is no longer called trust. It is man's failings to choose God as their focal point in life that creates unhappiness, disharmony and hatred. 

Let's begin first with the family. Take a good look at our family members and recognise their imperfections. Yet, look beyond to accept that our limitations disallow us from seeing God in them. Yet another step ahead, pray for God's graces to recognise and accept that though imperfect, these people who we cannot choose right from birth, have been given to us by God. They MUST be the best for us. How do we make our daily choices in response to these family members to bring peace, joy and love within the family? Perhaps, God meant for us, precisely, to have this variety of characters in our families to teach us the ways to be instruments of peace, joy and love. Are we teachable to learn? 

25 July 2010

10.01pm