Being Patient With God

 

I recall all the times I didn’t trust in my teachers.  I’d raise my hand and say: “That can’t be true” to dispute something they had said.  Like the time how I knew that things contracted as they froze except, as the teacher said, water, which expands.  What??  That can’t be true.  I didn’t believe that so much that I stuck an ice cube tray filled to the top with water in the freezer that night, and had the expanded overflow water on top of other things in the morning.  And then I KNEW how precise mathematics was, until I learned about pi --- 3.1458…. into infinity.  What??  A mathematical term which was not precise?  Accepting things beyond our knowledge is hard.

I read tomorrow’s Gospel (Jn 21:1-14) about how the apostles had spent another night catching no fish, and then (the risen) Jesus said to them to cast their net out again.  This time Peter didn’t argue, and the net was filled to overflowing (again).  Jesus was patient with Peter, never giving up on him.  And as the commentary in The Better Part notes: “And Peter is now ready to trust more, because he has experienced his own weakness and so has grown in humility.”

“Humility is the hardest but most necessary lesson that every Christian apostle has to learn.  Many times, he does so because it’s the only way we will learn that we are limited, that we are not God.  Substantial humility is the habitual and joyful awareness that we are utterly dependent on God for all things, from the most sublime to the most mundane.”

Jesus:  That morning on Lake Tiberius was just like a morning three years ago on the same lake.  Both times they had spent the night and caught nothing.  Both times I approached them --- because they didn’t know how to come to me.  I told them to cast out their net.  And both times they pulled in a huge catch.  Peter needed to begin again.  How much this pleased me!  Begin again, in your efforts to follow me, to be like me, to build my kingdom, in your attempts to repair broken relationships, to succeed where you have already failed, to form virtue where you have vice --- in all these things you will need to begin again a thousand times, and though it may seem you are starting from scratch each time, as it did to Peter, you’re not.  Each time you look at Me, each time you hear My voice, each time you trust Me after a failure, all the important virtues (humility, faith, hope, love) are stronger.

If ever you feel discouraged when you should just be dusting yourself off and beginning again, I can guarantee that your discouragement doesn’t come from Me.  I came not to condemn but to save.  My love for you doesn’t depend on your impeccability ---- in fact my love for doesn’t depend on anything.  My love for you is total, like a waterfall that never stops flowing.  You can always begin again.

Be patient with God, and He will be patient with you.  “Lord, I will never give in to discouragement again,  Maybe I can’t help feeling the emotion, but when I do, You will remind me that it doesn’t come from You, that with You I can always begin again, and that You will bring good out of the worst failures, the worst evils.  Thy will be done.  Lord, I trust in You.”

We will never totally understand God and His ways while we are on earth.  Our minds are not as big as God’s mind, but we can grow in an understanding relationship with Him, if we can grow in humility and patience.  There are so many things permitted by God, blessings and sufferings, which we may never understand.  The word “faith” encompasses it all.  Faith is not believing in fairy tales nor “making a wish”.  Faith is that all the ways of God make sense, and we will come to understand more if we have humility and patience, and trust.

Jesus, I trust in You, but it is not a blind trust.  One of the things Peter learned over time was how much Jesus loved him.  It was a love he --- and we --- can come to trust in, now and always.  Learn to know Him, about Him, and what He did and why, and how much He loves.  It’s all in the Scriptures, and the graces we will get when we talk to Him.  And then we can trust with confidence that all He has promised will come true.  Just wait patiently.