BECAUSE WE ARE ALLOWED OUR OWN WILL, WE GO BACKWARDS AND FORWARDS…
“I dare say we have all seen an old woman driving a hen. She stands, with her dress held out, trying to get the hen into the open door of the hen-house. But, for some reason or other, the hen doesn’t seem to see the open door and she gets terribly excited, all her feathers get ruffled and she makes any amount of dust and fuss, clacking away, with the old lady behind trying to show her in. She hops up and down and beats herself against the netting, and it never seems to occur to her to go through the wide-open door. Then, suddenly, she realises and sees the door. All her feathers go down and she walks in quite quietly, without another sound. Well, God is rather like the old woman. He drives us. He blocks our way. We try one path, and then we come to a stop – it is a cul-de-sac. God is blocking us, and we have either to go back, or to the right or left, and find another path. We go down that, and again God blocks it, and so on, until at last Gods gets us into OUR WAY. It may seem unnecessary, all this going backwards and forwards, but it isn’t. It’s God’s way of showing his will for us.
FORTUNATELY GOD DOESN’T ALWAYS GIVE US OUR DESIRES
In the same way God allows our faults and temptations. But surely God cannot want me to have such a weakness, temptation? Oh yes. He made each of us with our individual character and its difficulties. If we look back we can see how through all our lives it has been the same thing – so we can’t help it, can we? For some reason, God has given these things to us to enable us to carry out his will. We must remember that circumstances are always favourable to God’s plan, always, always. To our own, no, very fortunately for us. God does not always give us our desires, at any rate not now. He may later on – in ten years, or a hundred. But what seems to us so unfortunate is the best possible thing in God’s plan, and so we must never look back.”
– Fr Bede Jarrett, 20th century
Prayers4reparation's Blog 