Moment With Betty

Most of us associate a miracle with a supernatural event – that is a suspension of an ordinary event. Take for example, the parting of the sea when the Israelites escaped from Egypt. Imagine if the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean would suddenly split into two and leaving a path in the middle for humans to walk through, or imagine the sun stopping in the heavens for several hours, how would you feel? But these are magical events that go against the laws of nature and cannot be explained scientifically. These kinds of miracles require a measure of Faith because they do not happen always or even at all.

Truth be told, we do not really understand the “laws” of nature. Yes, nature operates according to a design that we have come to accept as normal. The difference between a miracle and an act of nature is only in the frequency. Imagine that the Sun was to rise only once in our lifetime, everyone would rush to see it proclaiming it as the most miraculous event they had ever witnessed. Since experiencing sunrise everyday, we see it as just another ordinary part of our lives but have we imagined what it will be like if there is neither Sun nor Rain. Yet we do not seem to appreciate the gift of God in our lives that come in different ways such as being able to exhale and inhale hundreds of millions of times throughout life without fail. The recent pandemic the World is facing with COVID -19 and its associated Oxygen shortage is a good example of exhaling and inhaling freely.

We are all familiar with the scarcity of oxygen that the infected patients need to stay alive and receive treatment. How many have lost their lives all because they couldn’t get Oxygen or even that they are not able to even inhale freely. Oh my gosh! we dismiss our ability to exhale and inhale freely as a” natural “exceptional event, though in truth it is simply a supernatural event that is repeating itself.  However, when we visit someone struggling, God forbid, to breathe, we suddenly realize that it is supernatural. No wonder King David reminds us in the book of Psalms: “that every Soul should praise God on every breath we take”.

We need to see the ordinary things that happen in our lives daily as supernatural because they are all around us. They are lost on us because we see them happening so “regularly” and” consistently” and so we commonize them but guess what, that does not make them less of supernatural.

For us to see our ordinary lives in a supernatural way, we just need to pause and appreciate the good health we enjoy, our children’s live, the peace in our families etc. Let me stress this point, it is the simplicity of our ordinary work, in the monotonous details of each day that we must find the secret which is hidden from so many, of something great and new love (Furrow point -489).

Abandonment to The Will of God:

“The pandemic that the whole World is experiencing is creating chaos in people’s lives and led to a new normal on how we now live our lives.  It has disturbed even our prayer lives and our actual way of praying and most people are asking, why did God allow this to happen but the important thing for us to know is that God never abandons HIS own.”by Arnel.  All that God asks us, is to love Him and His designs no matter however they are presented to us.

Abandonment to the will of God is surrendering our Will to the Will of God. I mean complete surrender to the will of God. Psalm 4:5 says, “that the great firm foundation of spiritual life is offering ourselves to God and being subject to His will in all things”. We must completely forget ourselves and find joy in fulfilling God’s pleasure.

If we refer to the Bible, we will see that Jesus and Mary did the same thing. When the time came for Jesus to die for our sins on the cross, He was gripped with fear but still surrendered to the Will of God by dying on the cross. “Father if you are willing, remove this cup from me yet, not my will but thine be done” same goes for the Virgin Mary, when she accepted to be the mother of the son of God despite the consequences that she might face as a result. She still surrendered to the Will of God.

Is it the problems in your marriage, finances, that stubborn child, the job you lost because of the pandemic? Whatever it may be, God is telling you to lay them at His feet in prayer. Surrender them in Faith and go to sleep and allow God to take care of them in His own Way and at His own Time. If you do not leave it for Him to handle, you will struggle, cry and toil but nothing will change until He says so. God oversees everything, and He said “Not a hair from your head will fall without God’s divine will”. We must rest in God’s grace as we are totally unable to contribute to our salvation. Says Andrew Hanson: According to him, God oversees everything including the little things. Remember that the will of God is not to be a secret we must uncover. God wants us to understand His Will far more than we want to understand it. He always makes His Will clear to those who seek it with an obedient heart.