Saturday, September 02, 2006

powerlessness

After spending "Katrina week" in New Orleans, unpacking Mom and Dad's books while the TV shows brought back so many horrific memories, reading the news items in the local paper and more recently in magazines like St. Anthony Messenger and America, and hearing the TV news with Houston's crime problem (easily linked with the influx of homeless evacuees), I found myself feeling sick with powerlessness. Naturally, problems that are too big for the government are also too big for me to solve, though some possible avenues seem to be utterly neglected. The Lord has given me many things to address that are within my scope, and saving New Orleans is not one of them. But I can pray! And I can also ask Jesus to share with me his own way of coping with human powerlessness, something he took on in his Incarnation, as Mark's gospel makes quite clear. What were Jesus' thought patterns when he found himself facing things he could not change without invoking divine power? What, really, were his human-divine convictions? His attitude? His interior dispositions? May he conform me interiorly to himself precisely here.

2 comments:

Lisa said...

Wow, what a powerful message considering the things I've been trying to deal with today! All I was asked to do was continue to pray but I kept wanting to do something to fix the situation. Prayer certainly is greatly than my own power... thanks for being the one to carry the message :)

Anonymous said...

Indeed, for us who are so used to "fixing things", we feel so useless when it comes to problems too big to solve ourselves. However, years ago, and many years before we were born, God took care of all, and the people in the world kept living and growing day after day. His will, His Way is sometimes hard to understand. He works in all people, and He can intervene whenever HE wants to. We have to be open to His will in our lives. We are limited, but we can help in our limited way.