There is a kind of proverb which says: Of all things, the obvious is the most easily overlooked. Example: You are sitting at the table and you ask; “Where is the salt?, only to find it right in front of us. There is something that should be obvious to us as persons of faith that we may easily over-look. It is the fact that God is constantly trying to come more fully into our lives.
The history of the chosen people shows that often enough they had difficulty recognizing God coming into their lives. In fact, when they failed to experience God’s presence among them they tended to fall into idolatry. And there is the case of Abraham. When the three men announced to him and his wife that they would have a son, they laughed. They thought it wasn’t possible to have a son at their age. But through faith Abraham accepted the incredible way God was coming into his life.
We, too, may fail to recognize the ways God comes into our lives. It can be a real struggle to recognize God touching our lives when experience some significant suffering. We tend to ask: how is it possible for a good God to allow such bad things to happen? Why is this happening to me? How can this be an instance of God touching my life?
St. Paul has an amazing statement suggesting that suffering is no incompatible with joy, that suffering is, in some mysterious way, linked to God in Christ. Paul says: “Even now I find my joy in the suffering I endure for you. In my own flesh I fill up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of his holy church.” What could be lacking in the sufferings of Christ. Surely, Christ’s redemptive act was in no way incomplete or insufficient.
What St. Paul seems to be suggesting is that the hardships, the suffering of those proclaiming the gospel and those seeking to live according to the gospel are somehow united to Christ’s suffering. In that way suffering takes on a special meaning, can even become a source of joy.
Once again we are made aware, perhaps painfully aware, that God has his own way of accomplishing his designs and of coming into the lives of his people, ways that may seem strange to us. So strange, in fact, that they can be grasped only in the light of faith.