Our ability to learn is what gives our minds direction, but what keeps us on a divine path is our faith in God. When we sense His creation with awe and amazement, we grow to understand how large our world is and how God put so much beauty into it. Learning to survive in a world that is based on secularism and relativism can be challenging, but we must acknowledge that to find the keys to this world, we need to carefully judge the wisdom we amass so that we do not destroy God’s intentions for us. He has a plan not just for us individually, but for the entire world’s population.
Have you ever wondered why you focus so much on one big picture that you miss all the little things that make up that picture? There are other times when you get so involved with the small things that you cannot see how important the big picture was in the first place. We get so caught up in our lives and the “me issue” that all other subjects simply fade into the background. The colors of your life change from bold hues to plain black and white. It is my belief that when the colors in your life remain for too long in the black and white, you loose your ability to love one another and turn all your thoughts to yourself. When Christ walked on the water, He wasn’t doing that so that we would drown. He was walking on the water so that our fears and doubts would be washed away and our lives would become filled with joy and love for others. We need to learn that there will be times when the large issues will be more important, but the small ones give those larger issues their colors, their uniqueness.
We all must learn to swim in both the swift and the slow moving rivers of our lives. The tempos, the speeds, of those rivers give us the energy and courage to continue on different paths and to understand that the shallows and miseries of those rivers give us wisdom to seek new and better ways to survive our journeys. Keeping an open heart to life’s positive and negative consequences encourages us to seek the paths that only God can give us. After all, He knew us before we were born, and everything we experience He already knows.
To learn from the wisdom we gain is to truly understand why we were the last creation in the Garden of Eden. He gave us free will to make our own decisions, and with time, our world has grown. Have we made mistakes? Yes, many. Have we learned from those mistakes? Not so much. Does God want us to grow closer to Him? Yes. Our biggest problem is that we think we know better than God, but we do not. There is no right or wrong way; there is only God’s way. With God’s guidance, we will see the lighthouse on the hill, where the beam makes all things new and leads us home to Him. John F. Kennedy kept a verse on the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office that said, “Oh Lord, my boat is so small, and Your ocean is so large.” He further prayed, “Lead me home, Father, and help me to be the person You want me to be.” This Breton Fisherman’s Prayer was for protection against life’s overwhelming challenges, and as president, he had many issues that most of us cannot begin to contemplate.
With both wisdom and faith, we can be assured that God will always walk beside us. Everything is possible with Him, even when we think He is not listening. In the peace of your soul, listen to His voice, and know that He is.
Anna Hartt
