Today is a sunny Friday but yesterday they had forecast thunder storms. In a way I was looking forward to them since the garden needs a good dousing of rain, but, it was not to be. It has set me thinking about disappointment… I’m probably not alone in being the kind of person who sees things ready in the distance and then awaits them. The question in my mind is what do I do if it doesn’t happen as I expected ?
We often talk about having ‘Plan B’, but I don’t think that the Christian is a ‘Plan B’ kind of person. You see ‘Plan B’ doesn’t centre itself on the promise of ‘Plan A’, and for the Christian, ‘Plan A’ does actually always happen. Of course the truth is that it doesn’t always happen in the way we were expecting, or in the time that we were expecting. We heard Christ’s promise to us at the end of the Gospel on Ascension Thursday this week:
“And know that I am with you always, yes, to the end of time.”
You see God’s time is the one that really matters, and God’s time is synchronised with the very being of each and every one of us. It is a personal time that he knows is best for each of us and that is the time that God always chooses for us.
God chose to send us the gift of the Holy Spirit and next Sunday we celebrate that in the great Feast of Pentecost.
It is the hinge moment in the birth of the Church and the event that leads us forward in our Christian vocation. Please pray this coming week, as I shall, that we be open to God’s Spirit and have that share of divine courage to act with it, because God’s time is always right !
Fr Peter