Is 29:17-24 Ps 27:1, 4, 13-14 Mt 9:27-31

Weekly Guide for Daily Prayer The Daily Reflections Praying Advent

As I sit here writing, I cannot help but be grateful for the many gifts that God has given me. While I know that my life is not perfect, I have come to terms with knowing that my life is a reflection of God’s plan for me. The reading that struck me the most today was the Gospel. My brother has been in the hospital for the past two weeks with a skin and tissue-eating infection. This affected my family and my school work in a terribly tragic way. Luckily he is doing much better now. My brother is only a couple years younger than I am and means more than anything in the world to me. The past two weeks have been a struggle not only emotionally, but also spiritually. I couldn’t understand, and still cannot fully grasp why the God of all that is good would allow a high schooler to not only have chronic pain and other ailments, but to top it off, to suffer through a serious infection. I would love to say that I was and have always believed that everything would be okay because God was in charge and had a plan. However, that is not what happened and I hate to disappoint you, readers, but there have been times in the past couple years that my faith began to dwindle. My brother is one of the best people in the world, so kind-hearted and so full of life that it just didn’t make sense.

When I went to visit him during this time he was always super chipper and happy to see me and the nurses. He never complained and was so grateful every time that someone would come to see him. Had it been me in the hospital, I probably would have been mopey and complaining about everything. I asked him, “Aren’t you mad that you are here?” He just smiled, saying, “Lauren, there is nothing to do, besides it will all work out. Besides, I get to see you so stop your complaining, and what would you like me to color?” The reason that I think he is out of the hospital is because he had great medical help, friends and family; but I think that his faith kept him strong. In the biblical story, the man asks Jesus to help him see. Jesus seeing his pain and the man’s faith and good heart allowed him to be healed. While that story seems slightly incredulous, I have seen it with my own eyes in my own family.  Jonathan’s faith has always been pure and strong and I know that God has big plans for him. Shoot, my brother wants to be a teacher, a designer, and in the Peace Corps….if that doesn’t say big plans I do not know what does.

Basically, my closing thought is that we must keep faith and keep heart. While God may not heal all of our ills, he can be there to help carry the burdens in our day-to-day lives, like Jesus carried the cross in order to save the word. Let us never give up, but rather accept and move on and work with a situation, what ever it may be.