What You Want....

....and What You Need.



     St. Philip Neri said:

"Do not grieve over the temptations you suffer. When the Lord intends to bestow a particular virtue on us, He often permits us first to be tempted by the opposite vice. Therefore, look upon every temptation as an invitation to grow in a particular virtue and a promise by God that you will be successful, if only you stand fast"

     When you pray for patience, goes God give us patience, or does He? give us opportunities to be patient?  When we pray for charity, does God give us charity, or does He give us opportunities to be charitable?

     I am reminded of a song by Laura Story, "Blessings."  (I would put it in this post, but my computer is being stubborn - look for it later on during the day when the computer decides to cooperate!)  In the song, she talks about the fact that God wouldn't be a loving Father if He just gave us virtue.  He loves us, and so He wants to see us grow and mature.  I love these lyrics: "All the while, You hear each spoken need, Yet love is way to much to us the lesser things," and "What if the trials in this life are Your mercies in disguise."  

     What is God doing in your life to give you opportunities to grow in virtue?  He is giving us what we need, not necessarily what we want.  Why?  Because He is a loving Dad and just wants to see the best for His kids.  It's like the situation with my little sister.  She wants to stay up later, like the "big" girls, because she is now getting older.  Yet instead of just granting her more privileges because of her age, Mom and Dad allow situations to arise in which they can observe her maturity.  Even if it is just observing her interactions with her siblings day to day, she is proving her maturity (or sometimes lack of) by her actions.

     Usually when something goes wrong in our life, we like to sit down and say: "Why God?  Where are you? And why can't I feel your love right now?"  And this is easy to do, believe me, I know because I do it pretty often.  Yet we have to get into the habit of seeing God work in mysterious ways.  His ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts.  He has such a beautiful plan for our life - better than we could ever imagine - and all we have to do is trust Him with our lives.

      Sometimes we sell God short.  We fail to realize that He created our very souls! How could He not have a beautiful plan?  Our plan and our will for us is typically not allowing us to be the best version of ourselves.  When we turn it all back over to God, our lives will blossom.
     Have you seen God's blessing in disguise recently?  Let me know about it in the comments!

God Bless you all,

Chloe M.