Each person, including yours truly, has a character or two in our lives who causes us grief. These people grind at our nerves. Despite our best efforts to love them where they are and for who they are, something about them grates at us. We often find ourselves not acting virtuously when life concerns them. Our emotions are hijacked. We go primal, as a friend so curtly explains it. Reacting instead of responding to this person’s buffoonery, we have a difficult time seeing past their vexing antics to the reality of the pain they experience and their emotionally laden cries for help.
By the grace of God, we also are usually blessed with a deep connection to a certain individual. This tie we feel with some soul lends to sharing knowledge, experiences, and frustrations that we would not otherwise consider divulging. Knowing we can trust our comrade, we pour out our hearts, triumphs, and the troubles we bear.
One such soul and I have always held this unique connection. As we have journeyed this life together, we have spent many hours conversing and extrapolating the most prudent fashion to handle delicate situations and relationships. This confidant and I detain a deep knowledge and understanding of each other’s crosses, gifts, and hurdles. Our relationship is rooted in love and familial connection. God has gifted us with our friendship for a variety of reasons that are evident to each of us.
Most recently, Our Lord permitted me to see how He has been using our connection to facilitate a more intricate understanding of individuals and plant seeds for Him. God placed one of the most irritating burrs in my saddle into my confidant’s life in a very personal and unique way. He gave my confidant an opportunity to plants seeds for Him that she would not have been able to plant without the deep knowledge she has of the intricacies of this person’s life due to my connection. And then, He craftily did the same for me, placing my confidant’s most troublesome relationship in my path. He gave me the opportunity to serve and love my confidant’s cross of a relationship in a unique and personal way. My privileged understanding of this person’s personal battles allowed me to see past her surface actions into her heart. Our Lord allowed my confidant and I to love and serve Him more intensely. By giving each of us an opportunity to embrace a woman at the well through our relational love and care for mankind, we were given the grace to see past hurts and poor choices and offer mercy, refuge, and love.
God is amazing like that. He crafts such an intricate story for each of us, weaving our lives together as delicately and complexly as only God could do. Our lives are intertwined for the good of His Kingdom, with opportunities in each moment of our days, in the most subtle and delicate situations, that allow us to plant seeds for Christ. He allows us to be vessels of His love and mercy.
Author, Lisa Terkeurst offers her wisdom on the matter of offering our trails and sufferings to the Lord in her book, It is Not Supposed to be this Way. She explains, “While his story and his blessings are unique to him, rest assured when you are chosen for suffering, you are chosen for the blessing of displaying the works of God as well. What if the worst parts of your life are actually gateways to the very best parts you’d never want to do without?” She goes on to instruct us to, “Hang on to God’s perspective. Give Jesus the weight of what you’re carrying. Stay unburdened and moldable. And you’ll be a light to many others!” If we can do this, lean into the Lord and keep our eyes fixed on Christ, seeing him in the broken, we can be vehicles of Christ’s love to the world, just as my confidant and I were able.
Call to Act: Is there a person He has placed in your life that you feel a deep connection to, a companion on this journey, a confidant? Not someone to gossip with, a woman who allows you to love more deeply and grow in virtue by her presence in your life. Is there someone you feel called to serve or lift up in prayer, maybe in this season or for years to come? I encourage you to take these two questions to prayer. Open your heart and ask the Lord to allow you to see into their souls and to experience their emotions. Allow your connectedness to help you to serve the Lord in the manner He is asking of you.
“For God is the one who, for his good purpose, works in you both to desire and to work. Do everything without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine like lights in the world.” Philippians 2:13-15
My prayer for you sister is that you can open your heart to see the aches of another and serve them well in Christ Jesus. I pray his loves pours out of you like a libation, as a comfort and healing balm for the wounded and lost. I pray you radiate joy and love. I pray you learn to lean into Our Lord and Master. “Look to him that you may be radiant with joy.” Psalm 34:6a
In the Letter of James we are encourages by the words, “Consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trails, for you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. And let perseverance be perfect, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. But if any of you lacks wisdom, He should ask God who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and he will be given…” James 1:2-5. Saint Clare of Assisi inspires us to act with her reminder to “Gaze upon Him, consider Him, contemplate Him, as you desire to imitate Him.”
Saint Clare and Saint Francis, pray for us that we may be vehicles of Christ’s love to the world. Ask the Lord to bestow on each of us a virtuous friend to help us to guide and lead each other closer to the Lord. Together beg the Lord to give us wisdom in our words and prudence in our actions so that we may always act in ways pleasing to God. Pray that we are able to see Christ in the troublesome and suffering and serve them as if they were Christ himself. We ask this through Christ, Our Lord. Amen.
Saint Clare and Saint Francis of Assisi
St. Francis grew up in a wealthy family and was living the life of a rich merchant’s son. He had planned to become a knight but after injury felt the call to leave his former life behind, thus renouncing his family. He began to live a life devoted to prayer, simplicity, and serving the poor. The Franciscan order was born. St. Francis’s simple but strict way of life was intriguing to many and unfathomable to others. He lived life to the extreme. Saint Clare was drawn to St. Francis through his preaching and deep devotion to Our Lord. She felt compelled to leave her wealthy family and join Francis, serving and living a life of poverty. St. Clare and St. Francis relied completely on the provision of the Lord for both food and shelter, owning nothing. Together Clare and Francis built a monastery for the Order of Saint Clare, then known as the Poor Ladies of San Damiano, now commonly referred to as the Poor Clares. St. Clare and St. Francis sowed and formed disciples for Christ. Clare and Francis became the best of friends over time and served the Lord well. He became her spiritual director. They encouraged each other in the most trying situations and helped each other to grow in virtue. These Saints kept God at the forefront, with their eyes on Him in all they endeavored. Saint Clare’s and Saint Francis’s intertwined lives sewed many seeds for Christ, building the Church. Read more about them here: https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saint-clare-of-assisi