thoughts on the news of the day: desire

hmmm…..

            The prayer below is from the pen of Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk and contemplative:

            “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead of me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end.  Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.  And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. Amen.”

            Sometimes all you can do is all you can do.  We stumble and fumble and make a mess of things.  We try our hardest without much result.  We might have started out sure as we can be that what we are doing is God’s will for us.  We might even find signs along the way. 

            But nevertheless, we find ourselves stuck again – uncertain as ever.  We want to do God’s will, we just don’t know what it is.  And that’s when we have to accept that we might not always know God’s will for us.  It’s possible that we are on the wrong path after all.

            So we hope that the desire to please God does, in fact, make God happy.  Even if we are totally misguided and misaligned, God accepts our desire to make God happy as an act of faith. 

            Once again we see ourselves on the road, we see a future, we see hope.

            hmmm…..