Thinking of Tomorrow

Father,

I know not what the future holds, whether good or ill awaits me tomorrow.  Speaking as a human, I cannot know if I will have food or a roof over my head next month or next year.  So much of life seems like a torrid wind that blows this little leaf about.  All my planning and dreaming may amount to nothing if the economy goes this way or that.  My fortune may rest in a decision made thousands of miles away by someone who has never met me.

The other day, a man told me that he thought that it was just chance that the church is what it is, that it could have gone the other way if those we called heretics won the day. We talked for a while about those who came long before we were born, as much as we knew of them.  After a while I asked him, “What if it was not all just chance: what if there was providence behind it all?”

We do not live in a world of fate or chance.  Every day is ordered by you.  That day ahead of me, the day that I fear, is already resolved in you.  I need not fear tomorrow, because you are already there making a path for me.  In peace I can lay down tonight and sleep, for it is you Lord who keep me safe.

Humility

Father;

 You have called us to put on the humility of Christ, yet I find that I so fear it.  I so often find myself growing indignant at any little mistreatment.  I feel the need to stand up for my rights.  I raise my chin, square my solders and look the world in the eyes.  How far short I fall from Christ, who bore the scourging of leather, bone and shards.  I so little bear the lashing of tongues.  Christ’s flesh was torn on my behalf, but I shrink from the smallest wounding my pride.

You said that you raise the lowly.  Do I trust you for that?  Do I trust that the more I am humbled on earth, the more I am raised up in Heaven?  Do I trust that you will be my advocate, so I need not be?  How little my faith must appear to you.  Such little trouble and I doubt.  Help my unbelief.

Help me father to bear the heel of man if that means the kiss of God.  Help me to feel so secure in your love and pleasure in me so that I do not care how some devalue me.  Help me, following Christ, to bear the cross that you have given me so that I might take hold of the glory that you have in store for me.  In all that befalls me, help me to feel secure in your love of me.

Amen.