In mealtime conversation recently, a young woman shared how she had asked God what it was like to trust Him. Her prayer was suddenly answered by the overwhelming sense that it did not matter what happened to her, because a good God was in control. It was tornado season, she said, but despite the sirens wailing outside, “it didn’t matter to me whether the roof fell in; whether I lived or died; it didn’t matter.” Such trust is what Jesus calls us to, as He says this Sunday, “Do not be terrified.” Despite natural disasters, famine, plagues and even persecution, we are in the hands of a good, good God.
The same young woman recalled asking God for another grace: to see all people as He did. For over the duration of her lunch break, she saw each person—familiar and stranger—through a lens of unconditional love. “It didn’t matter what that person had done or who they were: the love was unconditional.” More impressive than these answers to prayer, to me, was the courage and forthrightness of the speaker. Her testimony brought to mind how St. Paul emphasized that God gives different spiritual gifts to each, but that we above all should seek to love and use our gifts to build up others, the Church. While we want to weigh private revelation carefully and seek virtue rather than supernatural phenomena, there’s no doubt that her simple witness bore good fruit. It blessed each of us at table with evidence that God, as she said, “always answers our prayers—either with ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘not yet’.” May we each be so brave as to speak of the good things God has done for us, and so proclaim the greatness of the Lord!
