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23

  We have noted that it is part of our human condition to crave security. We are, most of us, prey to anxiety. We would like to be able to foresee and control the future, to guarantee a secure future. True faith invites us to place our security in God. This is not easy. We want to trust God but we fear. We say we trust him, but often we try to keep some control. We try in a subtle way to manipulate God, to oblige him to be on our side. Often our religious practices and our observance of God’s law are, in a subtle way, motivated by the hope that this will win his favour and guarantee his blessing and protection. Have you noticed how there can be a sharper edge to our disappointment when a ‘good’ person meets tragedy and a ‘bad’ person enjoys prosperity. This is close to a fundamentalist response to God. It is not genuine faith which involves surrendering our security to God and abandoning ourselves in trust to the God of Jesus.

  Jesus invites us to see a God of unconditional love, the God who gives all freely and generously because he is love and we belong to him. This God gives all as gift. Jesus invites us to see everything as gift and invites us to a corresponding response of gratitude. This gratitude is a happy, joyful experience and can lead us to true faith and real trust. ‘Be happy at all times; pray constantly; and for all things give thanks to God, because this is what God expects you to do in Christ Jesus’ (1 Thessalonians 5:17-18). The teaching of Jesus is so simple, so profound. He tells his listeners that the life they have is God’s free gift to them. Now if God gave the gift of life, will he not be concerned about the food to nourish that life? ‘Surely life means more than food!’ (Matthew 6:25). Your Father feeds the birds and clothes the flowers. Are you not worth much more than they? So, do not worry about tomorrow.

   If I find it hard to trust, I should ask myself if I have a sense of gratitude. Gratitude suggests that we are away of a gift received, aware we have something to be thankful for. Do I have this awareness? The more I have it, the more joyfully grateful I will be and the more I will be inclined to trust. Do you think the elder brother in the story of the Prodigal Son had any sense of gratitude? It seems not. He did not think there was anything to be grateful for. He had earned whatever was coming to him from his father. As the sense of gratitude was missing, so was the spirit of joy. He was not a happy person. I find it hard to imagine him laughing. The man was blind to the true reality, blind to the wonder and beauty of his real condition, that everything the father owned was for him. It was all his and he did not have to work for it or earn it. It was all his because his father loved him. ‘My son, you are always with me, and all I have is yours’ (Luke 15:31). Jesus came to open the eyes of the blind, to open our blind eyes to the incredible, joyful wonder that we belong to God’s family and all that God owns is ours. We are not servants or paid hands. We are children and heirs to all God’s beauty and glory. ‘All I have is yours.’ And Thomas Merton adds a beautiful comment, ‘Everything is mine, precisely because everything is his. If it could not be mine, he would not even want it for himself.’

  Jesus says my life, my self is a gift from God. It is a gift in which God delights and which he hopes I will love and enjoy. Among ourselves, when we take care to choose a gift for a special friend, we hope the friend will appreciate it. A gift touches the heart. It is given because someone cares. It is not a reward for work done. It says someone sees me as special, just because I am and not because of what I do. When I become aware that God has gifted me with life and love and wants to share all he has with me, must I not experience great joy? Jesus experienced great joy simply in being the messenger of this good news. How disappointing for him if we do not seem to receive the gift with a corresponding joy. He says, ‘I have told you this so my own joy may be in you and your joy may be complete’ (John 15:11).

  Jesus wants to open our eyes to the reality that all is gift. One day he told a story about a farmer who wants to hire workers for his farm (Matthew 20:1-16). At the start of the day he hires men and agrees a fair wage with them. As the day goes on, the farmer finds other men unemployed and he hires them at different times of the day. At the end of the day, he pays them all the same wage. Needless to say, the workers who started work at the beginning of the day complained when they saw the latecomers getting the same pay. When you read this story, try not to get all self-righteous and uptight about the ‘unfair’ treatment of the early workers. You will miss the whole point of the story and lose the joy and power Jesus wants to communicate. This is not a trade union matter. It is a peep into mystery, into the mystery of God’s heart. In fact the early workers were not treated unfairly at all, they got the fair and agreed wage. The point is that the later workers were treated very generously. But the more important point, the very heart of the story, is that we are the late workers! When it comes to loving and serving God, we are the latest of the late workers and yet, despite that, God gives us all. We should not pass over this truth quickly. We should pause and question ourselves and ask, ‘Do I really believe this?’ We must allow this basic truth to overwhelm us. When we ‘see’ it, the door is open to a new sense of joy which no one can take from us, a share in Jesus’s own joy, and the door is open to a new sense of trust. Surely I could surrender my security to such a God.

  The point of this story is that God is generous beyond all our imagining. His generosity is not as ours. He is not a man. He is God. We have earned nothing, but we are given everything because that is what God is like, this is what love is like. Let us rejoice in what we have received. Let us rejoice in what others have received. Let the gifts we see in others move us not to envy but to praise of God. God is at the centre of everything. He is at the centre in the sense that he is the source of all being, of everything good, true, beautiful, joyful. And he is at the centre as the God of love, ultimately in control of everything, holding all together and sustaining and directing all in love.

  Ask yourself who is at the centre of your life. Is it God or yourself? Is it some other person or object? Picture your life as a great circle full of a wide variety of persons, concerns, occupations, dreams, joys, sorrows. If you picture your life as such a great circle, who or what is at the centre? I always used to see myself at the centre. I don’t mean that I was a very selfish person, but my life was self-centred in the sense described above, with all that great variety of creatures revolving round me in my world, and getting their importance from their relationship to me and the way they affected me. Within my circle, God had a place, hopefully the most important place, but he was only one of the many ‘object’ within the circle revolving round me. I was like Martha in the gospel, busy about many things. I had not properly realised that only one thing mattered.

  Seeing life this way, I was missing the obvious. I was not really living a faith life, nor living in trust. The basic, most profound and simple teaching of faith, found in catechism or Bible, is that God is at the centre of everything. And he is there not just as a geometric point in the middle of a great area of space. He is at the centre as the source of all life, beauty, love. If he were not there, all would fall apart and there would be nothing. It was a great blessing for me to become aware of this, that God is at the centre of the circle of my life, and that it is he who has given me a place in his life and not the other way round. It now seemed ludicrous even to think of my giving God a place in my life. The proper faith attitude, which sees God at the centre of everything, is the beginning of trust. I live, move and have my being in the circle of God’s love. If I really believe this, I should want to cry our in praise and thanksgiving.

  How often have we heard people cry out, and have ourselves cried out in time of distress, ‘Why me, Lord!’? A true spirit of gratitude should lead us to make this same cry into a prayer of wonder and thanksgiving. What a pity we so seldom count our blessings. We are so quick to notice our sorrows and cry out in complaint. But our lives are full of signs of God’s love. Sadly, we take those for granted and fail to give thanks. Have we not got a thousand reasons for crying out in wonder, praise and thanksgiving, ‘Why me, Lord!’?

   ‘Why me, Lord!’ Why should you have set your heart on me and called me into being? Why give me a mind to know, a body to feel and a heart to love? Why scatter so much beauty in my path to delight my being: moon and stars, river and sea, colour, form and perfume of flowers, birdsong, laughter, song and dance, friendship and love – and endless litany inviting my ‘Amen’ and ‘Alleluia’? Why all this for me? Why for me the gift of faith which gives deep, rich meaning to my life? Why should I be brought into the secrets and inner mystery of your being by Jesus, and be given your own Holy Spirit to interpret these mysteries which Kings and Prophets longed to see and hear but did not? Why should I, poor Lazarus, be invited to the banquet of the Eucharist, invited to sit at table with God and receive no mere crumbs but the very divine life of the Lord? And why should I be on the invitation list for the eternal heavenly banquet? In our prayer, let us walk more often in the garden of praise, thanksgiving and trust.

  Long ago, in a certain city, there lived a king famous for his generosity. In the same city lived Peter, a simple beggar man. Peter’s great dream was to meet the king. He knew that if he could ask an alms from the king he would receive a royal gift. Then one day it was announced that the king would visit the city and Peter felt his dream could come true. The great day came and Peter made sure to be at the front of the excited crowd lining the street. Soon the crowd heard singing and cheering and around the corner came the procession. There were soldiers, courtiers, drummers and dancers and, in the centre, the king riding a fine horse. As the procession drew near, Peter ran from the crowd in the middle of the street. Immediately soldiers rushed to remove him but the king called them back. Then the kind stopped his horse, handed the reins to an attendant, dismounted and walked towards Peter. A hush fell on the crowd and then there was a gasp of surprise when the king went down on one knee before Peter, put out his hand and said, ‘Peter, what gift will you give your king today?’

    Peter was confused by the king’s unexpected action. He was also disappointed and angry, but all eyes were on him. He pulled his begging sack from his shoulder, put his hand in among the bits and pieces and felt some grains of corn. He took out one grain and put it in the king’s hand. The king showed no displeasure at the small gift. He accepted it gratefully and walked back to this horse. The crown cheered their gracious king and the procession resumed. Peter, disappointed and sulking, left the celebrations. He made his way home to his small hut, went in and angrily threw his begging sack on the floor. When the sack hit the floor it opened and the contents spilled out. Last to roll out were the grains of corn. As Peter looked, he noticed something shining on the floor. He went over and there among the grains of corn was one large gold nugget. He stared in disbelief and wonder. The silence in the hut was broken by the noise of the celebration in the street and he remembered the king. He had given the king one grain of corn and now he had one nugget of gold. He stood there in deep thought and then said to himself, ‘Surely he is a generous king. I wish I had given him more.’

  When the great day comes for each of us to stand before our king and when he shows us our heavenly home and says, ‘All I have is yours’, will we not regret our lack of gratitude and trust and maybe find ourselves echoing the words of Peter the beggar man, ‘I wish I had given him more!’?

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