Spiritual Reading & God's will

As mentioned a few days ago I have started re-reading "He Leadeth Me" by Fr. Walter Ciszak S.J. As the title suggests, this book is about being open to do and accept God's will-to let God lead us. Such a simple concept-one which we say "Of course, I know that." Yet we need to be reminded over and over, because so often we think our case is different. As it says in the book:

"Not the will of God as we might wish it, or as we might have envisioned it, or as we thought in our poor human wisdom it ought to be. ... His will for us was the twenty-four hours of each day: the people, the places, the circumstances he set before us in that time. Those were the things God knew were important to him and to us at that moment... (emphasis in the original) The temptation is to overlook these things as God's will. The temptation is to look beyond those things, precisely because they are so constant, so petty, so humdrum and routine and to seek to discover instead some other and nobler "will of God" in the abstract which fits our notion of what his will should be."

For some, this is the temptation-we need something better or bigger than what God has in mind-often because somewhere in our depths we are thinking of our own glory instead of God's? I think that is why we are told that our action must always come out of our prayer life. It is said that Mother Teresa would not let her sisters skip their morning prayer because a poor beggar was at the front doorstep. Prayer first, "the poor will always be with you." (This point touches on something Pope Benedict XVI writes in Deus Caritas Est! - more on this later.)

Spiritual reading can help you connect the dots in your prayer. Those words from your spiritual reading can stick with you during the day and enrich your prayer life. This morning I read:

"Being faithful to God demands a struggle. And it means close combat, man to man-the old man against the man of God-in one small thing after another, without giving in." (Furrow #126)

Because the message I read in "He Leadeth Me" about God's will still played in the back of my mind, this brief passage from Furrow this morning took on a meaning for me in the context of accepting God's will that otherwise it might not have done.

From Bethany, the small holding in Bethune...Oremus pro invicem!