A thought for the emptiness so many find in their lives!

Ask anyone what the greatest disappointment in life is and many will respond with,” an empty feeling every time they look for companionship, and do not find any.” This of course parallels loneliness where even being with someone you thought loved you and realized that attribute never existed.

Some encounters in our life begin with a hope of success finding our dreams become just that, a dream. We can read many journals regarding successful marriages, a vocation many will fight to obtain, or some position that will use our expertise to enhance some needy outcome for humanity. If we are lucky, as many like to call success, we may find that there was something missing when our heart was tuned to just human endeavor.

The one tangible expression of “let go and let God” may not appear tangible in our world of technology that has all but eliminated God from our minds instead of the presence of the Holy Spirit. Look around at those who seem to flourish in their chosen trek of reaching the top in any endeavor without uncovering the many obstacles that these entrepreneurs are seeking to accomplish. We may need to present for our discussion that whenever any of us decides to program our desires in life without relying on help from the Holy Spirit, we are taking a chance on failure. Remember with God there are no chances, he deals with absolutes.

Imagine if God would have said, “We’ll take a chance and see if man will work out” instead of “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” (Gn 1” 26). As I mentioned above, God does not deal with chances or second plans when the first one fails.

God’s plan for creation already existed in eternity and there became just one mention from his Word and we all are benefitting from the Word God spoke to himself. Himself indicating the three persons of the Holy Trinity.

Do more than take a chance by asking God for help in our decisions, trust is needed in every step we take in life. Remember the words God spoke to me when one daughter had a severe physical incident and I was asked to pray. As I lowered my head for prayer, the Lord said, “Fear is useless, what is needed is trust.” That scenario also fits when we undertake a marriage, a vocation, and positions that can become earth shattering for humanity. Ask God, first. Then trust that He will be there to guide our decisions.

To trust in someone who has more expertise in a direction we are about to undertake, and the wisdom that appears with an answer will surpass the empty feeling we discovered by accepting their endless and knowledgeable know-how.

The moral life of Christians is sustained by the gifts of the Holy Spirit. These are permanent dispositions which makes man docile in following the promptings of the Holy Spirit. (CCC 1830).

There can be times when our own decisions may get us in trouble without the help of God through his Holy Spirit’s guidance.

Coming to know God; through the human person: With his openness to truth and beauty, his sense of moral goodness, his freedom and the voice of conscience, with his longings for the infinite and for happiness, man questions himself about God’s existence. In all this he discerns signs of his spiritual soul. The soul, the “seed of eternity we bear in ourselves, irreducible to the merely material,” can have its origin only in God. CCC 33).

Ralph B. Hathaway