By Fr Joseph Reddy SVD
One of the faithful religious nuns who was present on my farewell day from a mission experience I took part in during 2010 dropped a card into my hands which is for me an all-time inspiration: “Life is a journey consisting of different steps of staircases. Whenever you get to one set of stairs, there will always be a platform leading to another. Don’t get discouraged on the way. Take every step as a challenge and move forward”. These words of encouragement and zeal kept me going even when the going got tough.
My trust and confidence in the Lord made me think, “As I move forward each day, I don't know what the future holds for me, but I know who holds my future and all its happenings”. If I had to face troubles and difficulties on the journey and everything seem to stand against me, I realised that I am not alone. What I have at that moment is only water, but I believe it’s Jesus who can make that water into wine. The wine – of encouragement, bliss, happiness and abundance of grace.
As the going gets tough, I am often reminded of a saying from the Bible, Psalm 32:8, which says: “I will guide you along the best path for your life”. I am sure Lord would say to me, “I will definitely come down and do something that is fitting for you. Just pull up a chair for me, I will be there with you to share your worry and eat with you. I will console, help, heal you and show you a way out”. However, when our Lord says, “I will walk with you and I will be with you,” I need to understand very concretely that the Lord can’t live my life.
I have to live my own life and to live means to face all that anguish, pain, many worries and ultimately the destiny of life. His grace and thoughtfulness is so enormous, it can wipe out the negativity to show-case life with fine experiences. The love of God is profusely experienced within my reach - in the concern of the people surrounding me, in the care that is rendered to me and the presence of the well experienced and well lived lives of legendary missionaries and their lives which drench my timid mind with much needed courage and turn my tough-going into a challenging task of facing the future. Because I believe there is nothing impossible in life when I can make that impossibility a challenge that I can conquer.