Your Failures, Transformed, Will Be Your Best Gift to the World
Reflection on Scripture from the 4th Sunday of Lent in Year A on occasion of the Scrutinies: 1 Samuel 16:1b, 6-7, 10-13a; Psalm 23: 1-6; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41
Your biggest shortcomings are God’s greatest opportunity in your life.
God constantly works towards restoration, towards drawing all things into right relationship. It is our role to collaborate in relationship with God towards that end. It is an end (a telos) that is inevitable. It is already-but-not-yet. It is normal to struggle connecting with this reality because of all the brokenness we see in ourselves, the people around us, and our world.
In these readings, David was the youngest, yet he was anointed to be the next king of Israel. He describes, in the 23rd Psalm, a banquet in the presence of his enemies. Our letter to the Ephesians tells us how shame cannot survive in the light, and our Gospel reading tells us that a man was born blind so that God’s work might be revealed in him. It was actually the ones born with sight who denied their blindness that were corrected.
What is your struggle today? This year? Take a moment to consider. Most of us have more than one.
I hope it shocks you that this is exactly the part of your life where God has the best opportunity to bless your world. God tells stories of restoration, of redemption, of suffering/death/resurrection. Many of us get stuck thinking that we need to accomplish it all, that the work of making your life whole is up to you. Sure, we often have opportunities to cooperate with God, but at the end of the day, it is God’s work that makes you whole.
Do you relate with God as one who has soft eyes for you, who is the best companion at every turn, who wants to structure the world so that each person can realize their dignity?
I wonder if this is one of God’s favorite pastimes! Imagine it: God walking around looking for yet another chance to accelerate someone’s transformation and restoration. God’s tender loving kindness showing up for you, looking for any opportunity to enrich you, to bless you in the midst of your struggle, to shine that healing light on your shame. God’s persistence in restoring the world’s structures towards justice. Is that how you see God?
Do you relate with God as one who has soft eyes for you, who is the best companion at every turn, who wants to structure the world so that each person can realize their dignity? Maybe you relate with God as a distant, powerful force that shows up every once in a while, but without any predictability. Maybe you feel afraid to approach prayer out of knowledge of your own shortcomings and God’s “required” punishments. Maybe you’re not really sure how to relate with God because it always seems to move: once you settle on a relationship dynamic, it changes.
I once had a spiritual director tell me that he questioned if anyone would make a good minister without experience in love, loss, and heartbreak. I want to share with you a quote from one of the foundational books for spiritual directors, describing desirable qualities.
“They are not perfect, but they are relatively mature. They show signs of having engaged in life and with people. … They have suffered, but not been overcome by suffering. They have loved and been loved and know the struggle of trying to be a friend to another. … They have experienced failure and sinfulness--their own and others’--but seem at ease with themselves in a way that indicates an experience of being saved and freed by a power greater than the power of failure and sin.” (The Practice of Spiritual Direction, 130)
Even in these people who are supposed to help you with your deepest wrestling with God, they know suffering, and failure, and sin. I think this quote helps us understand what it might look like for God to redeem that suffering, for a spiritual director or for you. Think of the biggest struggles in your life and imagine what it would be like for you to experience being saved and freed by a power greater than the power of failure and sin. That will happen! This is what the Gospel is saying. Your biggest shortcomings are God’s greatest opportunity in your life. Think differently! In the midst of all the pain, the problems of your world, and daily struggles, God continually reaches out in relationship with you to walk together one step at a time to put your failures in service of building up God’s reign, even now. Each of us plays our part in responding to God in the real circumstances of our lives, and that is your mission.
