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| Art by Ruth J Smucker - I Have Overcome |
they labor in vain who build.
Unless the LORD guard the city,
in vain does the guard keep watch.
It is vain for you to rise early
and put off your rest at night,
To eat bread earned by hard toil—
all this God gives to his beloved in sleep.” (Psalm 127:1-2)
This Psalm has “haunted” me from the time I began praying the Liturgy of the Hours. The Liturgy of the Hours is the prayer of the Catholic Church. Basically it is a form for praying the Psalms and various Canticles of the Bible at various hours of the day.
I think most of us have a habit of wanting to be in control, of wanting to do whatever it takes to reach some particular goal. I know I do. It’s something I constantly take to prayer, to Confession.
Surely if I just do “x+y” then I will achieve “z”, right? Shouldn’t everything just be a mathematical equation, shouldn’t it just be science?
Somehow, life is not just a mathematical equation, and having a geek for a husband, and watching many a YouTube video relating to science and new scientific discoveries, I think the deeper science digs the more it finds out that there are unknowns in these equations, that there are things we cannot measure that somehow hold the equations together and make them work. Also, sometimes these equations just plain come apart.
Some things just cannot quite be explained—yet—and these things have to be taken as is, on faith in a way, until somehow we can maybe discover more.
If doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity...What about when we put in “x+y” and expect it will always give us “z”?
Looking at it simply, this should be the case, looking at it deeper, like quantum relationships, this is not always so. Results vary, equations break.
“Unless the LORD build the house,
they labor in vain who build.
Unless the LORD guard the city,
in vain does the guard keep watch.
It is vain for you to rise early
and put off your rest at night,
To eat bread earned by hard toil—
all this God gives to his beloved in sleep.” (Psalm 127:1-2)
I do believe that the something more needed for life is God. He holds everything together. I believe this on faith, because I know that something greater has to be holding everything in order.
So why is it so difficult to trust that God will hold together my own little crazy life and will use my life for His greater glory, for the good of others, and for the good of my own soul? If I do believe that He is an omnipotent God, what prevents me from putting my full trust in Him?
I think there have been at least a few times in the last several months where I have complained that God seems to often play the role of a procrastinator. Why is it that some things just happen to work out at the very last second possible?
Now I know that sometimes it is just how the the equation works out, and the odds are thus and so, and so finally it had to just work out one way or another.
However, God has a perfect will and has a permissive will. Everything that happens is either ordained by God’s perfect will or God’s permissive will. Regardless, God’s will is somewhat of a mystery to us, and it permeates everything.
If God so cares about the order of the universe, about quantum mechanics, about gravity, and so on, then can I not also assume that He cares about the details of my life, in an intimate way? If God’s will and His abundant charity holds all things together down to the least electron, then will He not care for my life?
I have certainly spent time laboring in vain, knowing that I was probably overexerting myself, that I might be wasting my time “barking up the wrong tree” and so forth. Nature readily obey’s God’s laws and commands, we however, have been given our own free will and can choose to work with His will or not.
I pray that someday I might learn to see more quickly when my labor is in vain. When I need to step aside and let God take over, or when I need to change what I am doing and work a different way to better work with God’s will.
So what is God’s will?
I will leave this post with a simple thought, a quote from Pope Francis regarding discernment:
"If a thought, if a desire takes you along the road of humility and abasement, of service to others, it is from Jesus," noted Pope Francis, "but if it brings you to the road of sufficiency, of vanity, of pride, along the path of an abstract thought, it is not from Jesus.” (Pope Francis, Mass Homily Jan 7, 2014)
The true key here is—as it is oftentimes in science as well—relationship.
What does my laboring mean for others?
