By Sr. Hope Therese
Shortly
before I left for my last mission as a novice in Davenport, Iowa the sisters
had a Chinese food night. This of course
involved fortune cookies. I received the
strangest fortune cookie I have ever received in my life. It said “What’s hidden in an empty box?” I have never had a fortune that was a
question before. My first thought was
how stupid it was. How can anything be
hidden in a box, if the box is indeed empty?
Yet, the question continued to drive me crazy.
I received many varied answers from Sisters
when I asked them the question. Some said
rice, Schrodinger’s cat, secrets, dreams, peace, love, faith, and hope as in
the story of Pandora’s Box. Perhaps the box only appeared to be empty because
what was in it was hidden. Perhaps the
box was really being looked at by a pessimist and was not empty, but full of
potential. With all the answers I
received I had to come up with my own after much frustration.
The empty box is my future. Part of my annoyance with the empty box comes
from not being able to see what lies in my future. I am the sort of person that sometimes, okay
most of the time, reads the ends of books and watches the ends of movies
first. When it comes to finding out what
will happen next I am not patient.
I have heard it said that the past is
history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift. That is why we call it the present. We need to appreciate every moment. Every moment of our lives is a precious gift
from God that we need to experience as it comes. Once it comes it is gone and we will never
have it back again. When we are present
to the present we are really living. It
is so important to really live. The
future is what we make of it.
However, God is in control and helping everything
to work according to his plan and the greater good. Have faith and trust that God’s grace will
impel you to make the right decisions in and for your future. The same God that helped you through any
problem you had in the past is still beside you here and now in the
present. He will be there in
future. In fact He has seen your future
and He is already there. Nothing will
interfere with His plan for those who trust in Him.
Today I can look back on my past and see how the
Lord was there all along even when I couldn’t sense how he was working. That reminds me that He is here with me today
even though I can’t see now how He is working.
When the future of a situation is out of your control knowing what will
happen in the end will change nothing.
Learning from the past is good, but dwelling on the changeless past is
pointless and a waste of time. All you
can do is surrender the past or the future of the situation into God’s hands and
pray that his will be done. If we waste time dwelling on the past or dreaming
about the future, then we are forgetting to live. I
In the Bible Mathew 6:34 says “Do not worry about tomorrow;
tomorrow will take care of itself.
Sufficient for a day is its own evil.”
The children of an almighty and ever loving God were never meant to be
anxious. Anxiety was brought into the
world with sin when man damaged his relationship with God. Our best friend Jesus Christ repaired that
relationship by giving up his life for us.
With a friend like that on our side is there any need to be
anxious? Patience is a virtue and a gift
of the Holy Spirit. If we pray to God
for patience he will help us to live as life happens without focusing on the
past or future. That is the way life is meant
to be lived.
When we wait for something it feels like forever,
but when it’s over it seems that time has flown so fast. Life is a series of journeys and
destinations. It is in the journeying
that life really happens. Humans are
naturally anxious and impatient and peace and patience usually do not come easy
to us. That is why peace and patience
are such precious and powerful gifts of God’s grace. Peace and patience help us to live.
I recently received the joyful news of my
sister’s second pregnancy. This was
something I was waiting for not so patiently, but the waiting helped me to
appreciate the moment more. The waiting
for the special moments in your life is what sometimes makes them more worthwhile.
I have been trying to resist looking into, and
even trying to ignore the empty box of my future. There is nothing to see and only God knows
what is there. At present I have been
filling up empty suitcases in happy anticipation of my first mission as a professed
sister. I will not know where I am going
until Profession day on October 4th.
I am starting to learn to be okay with that and everything else out of
my control.
The last fortune cookie I opened said; “Make your
life a mission, not an intermission.” I
think that advice speaks for itself. I
refuse to make my life an intermission by peering into an empty box.
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