A man was lost in a desert. Later, when describing his ordeal to his friends, he told how, in sheer despair, he had knelt down and cried out to God to help him."And did God answer your prayer?" he was asked.
"Oh, no! Before God could, an explorer appeared and showed me the way."
(Anthony de Mello)
It is one of the great spiritual attributes to be able to see God's graciousness in life. It is easy to miss. When things are going well, we take the goodness of life for granted, and forget the giver. When things are going badly, our attention moves (often obsessively so) to the bad, and the good, which remains, is forgotten. To see God's graciousness in the everyday is a real gift, a gift to be nurtured. And to see God's graciousness when life is going well or not, consistently that is, brings true happiness. It means that we have to see everything as gift, of course. And that is humbling, and it makes us slow down a bit.
[Above is a picture of the late Anthony de Mello.]
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