By Fr. Roy Cimagala
THAT passage from the Book of Isaiah that has become very popular among many people deserves to be indelibly printed in our mind and heart, especially when we are going through some rough times in our life. “Can a woman forget her infant, so as not to have pity on the son of her womb? and if she should forget, yet will not I forget thee.” (Is 49,15)
Yes, God never abandons us! Even if it strongly seems otherwise, we should just let our faith prevail and stick to the truth that God never abandons us. And more than not abandoning, he helps us. We should be wary of our tendency to be overcome by the negative thought that God would be abandoning us. That would be a tragedy for us.
When we find ourselves in great difficulties and we seem to be helpless, we should just drill into ourselves this truth of our faith: God never abandons us. God loves us. He takes care of everything, including those things that we cannot anymore handle.
We should not allow our feelings of sadness to be so dominant and pervasive that we shut off God’s many and often mysterious ways of helping us. If we do not pose a deliberate impediment to God’s ways, there is always hope. In our darkest moments, some light will always come piercing and dispelling the darkness away.
That is why it is important that we always nourish and strengthen our faith-driven hope. Given our condition of pilgrim here on earth, we should make sure that we be guided by hope so we can manage to be always on the move toward our ultimate, spiritual and supernatural goal.
We should not get distracted or entangled by our earthly affairs, whether good or bad, for as the Letter to Hebrews would put it: “For here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come.” (13,14) Thus, we have to strengthen our hope always.
Hope is first of all not just a virtue that we produce, cultivate or keep ourselves. It is first of all a gift of God, given to us in abundance. It is the gift of Christ himself who, by the Holy Spirit, is made present in us through his words, his sacraments, his Church. All we have to do is to correspond to this wonderful reality as vigorously as possible.
We have to strengthen our faith in God’s constant love for us. As dramatized in the parables of the lost coin and the lost sheep, God will always take the initiative to look for us if we happen to be lost. And if we would be like the prodigal son, we should not hesitate to return to God who is all eager to receive us no matter how unworthy we feel ourselves to be.
We should have a good control of our emotions and our other human faculties that certainly cannot cope with all the mysteries of our life so that these do not give problems to our faith and trust in God’s ways.
And, yes, we have to learn to suffer. In this life, there is no other way but to suffer. This is simply the consequence of all the sins of men. But if we unite our suffering with that of Christ, we can look forward also to our resurrection and victory over sin and death with Christ.
Yes, God never leaves us!
Email: roycimagala@gmail.com
