The Messenger - July 2008 - EDITORIAL JULY 2008
By - 01 July 2008
We must get about a thousand letters every week from our readers. We can publish only a very small selection but I am moved by the strong desire of so many people to thank the Sacred Heart for answering their prayers in times of anguish and pain.
Occasionally I notice that the writers recognize that God has answered their prayers but in a way that they might not have dreamt of. I sometimes worry that when things did not work out exactly as some others had hoped, they might imagine their prayers were not heard. Our prayers are always heard. The Lord hears the cries of our hearts, and always fulfils them, but only he knows how best to fulfil these desires. Yet sometimes we do not even notice what he has done, and fail to thank him.
A story I remember can best illustrate this.
A farmer had an old horse for ploughing his fields but one day the horse escaped. His neighbours sympathized with his bad luck. The farmer just shrugged his shoulders, ‘Bad luck, good luck, who knows?’ Some time passed and the horse returned but now with a couple of wild horses from the broad plains. His neighbours now congratulated him but again he only shrugged, ‘Good news, bad news, who knows?’
His neighbours remembered his words when his son, who was breaking in the wild horses, fell off and broke his leg. His neighbours were sure this was bad news, but the farmer was not so sure. A few days later the Army descended on their farms conscripting their young men but they did not take the farmer’s son as his leg was broken. This did appear to the neighbours to be good luck, but this time they were more cautious. ‘Good luck, bad luck, who knows?’
It is best to leave it to God to decide what is ‘good luck’ and what is ‘bad’, and thank him when all things turn out for good for those who love him. I remember a good man who had been very disappointed in love. The girl he loved very much, first agreed to marry him, but later rejected him. Although he married later and had a happy married life with a most loving wife and three beautiful children, he still nourished a grudge for losing the ‘might-have-been marriage’. It was only when he was asked if he regretted his marriage, his wife, his children, that he realized how he had blinded himself to the gifts God had given him. God gave him ‘good luck’ but he continued to see only ‘bad luck’. Thank God.
John Looby, SJ - Editor