Never worry, God takes care of everything

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

Chaplain

Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE)

Talamban, Cebu City

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com

THIS should be the attitude to have. If we still don’t have it, then let’s start training ourselves to acquire such outlook in life. The secret is again to strengthen our faith in God who takes care of everything, even if his ways escape our understanding and expectations.

With a strong faith in God, we can learn how to be tough and sporty in the game of our life that can get rough. We would know how to deal with the challenges, trials, problems and all the possible negative things in our life without falling into unnecessary worries. Yes, we would know how to ride out the storms of our life.

Obviously, our initial and spontaneous reaction to life’s difficulties may be that of worrying, but we should not stay long there. We know that once we recover our Christian senses, we have no reason to worry.

Yes, we should try to find the solutions to our problems and to fathom the many mysteries of our life, but knowing that humanly speaking we can only go so far, let’s just be quick to go to God, asking for his grace, enlightenment and strength, and then just move on.

To be tough in life, we need to learn how to be accepting of things that can come to us and live a certain sense of abandonment, without compromising our duty to be responsible for our life also. We should know how to keep our feelings and emotions in check, since they have the notorious tendency to dominate us and to go against right reason and even our common sense.

This need for toughness was somehow referred to by Christ when he said: “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent are taking it by force.” (Mt 11,12)

Let’s always remember that our life has a lot more to offer and to challenge us than we can cope. Aside from having to contend with our human weaknesses, temptations and sin, we also have to deal with the supernatural goal of our life that we oftentimes do not believe in. We should not be surprised by this fact of life, and just try our best to rev up our faith in God.

Let’s be like Mary, the Mother of Christ and our Mother, who when told that she was going to be the Mother of the Son of God, just said “Be it done to me according to your word,” even if she did not fully understand how she can conceive the very Son of God in her womb.

Many times, we have to repeat Mary’s words of acceptance to the mysterious will and ways of God, so we do not let ourselves be carried away by doubts, fears, worries that often lead us to some mental health issues, or worse, to compromise our spiritual life. These days, cases of this sort are increasing. Some even have given way to suicide over something that can be considered as a light problem.

We should look for Christ always and be with him especially when we find ourselves in difficulties. A healthy spirit of abandonment in God’s hands is necessary even as we exhaust all possible human means to achieve our goals or to tackle all the challenges, trials and predicaments of our life. We should never forget this truth of our faith.

We always have to go to God through Christ in the Holy Spirit. This is not an exercise of surrender and futility, but rather of conquest and victory. With God, everything always works for the good. (cfr. Rom 8,28)