The associated reading for this reflection can be found in your Every Sacred Sunday Mass journal or online here.
All in God's Plan
What is man that you should be mindful of him,
or the son of man that you should care for him?
Psalm 8:5
It’s tempting for me to believe, in my own infinite Millenial / Generation Y wisdom, that I’ve got it all figured out. That I know exactly what God wants for me, and it’s only a matter of time for that to play out in real life. And then when that plan doesn’t seem to be coming to fruition exactly how I knew it was supposed to, I’m tempted to wonder if God’s plan was really all it was cracked up to be in the first place.
But when I read today’s Gospel passage from John, it seems as if God is inviting me to, well, trust him. Perhaps even now, a full three decades-plus into my life on earth, not only do I not have it all figured out, maybe (gasp) God hasn’t even told me the whole plan yet. Or even most of the plan!
Why? Perhaps I still couldn’t “bear it now” (John 16:12). And not because that plan stinks and I would be crushed to find that out. Perhaps I’m too much of a wimp right now and would be freaked out to hear about what I’m going to have to go through. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s too great for me to fully comprehend and take in.
Of course, that’s not to say there won’t be trials along the way, just the opposite. But these challenges, taken in the lens of today’s First Reading, that God has found “delight in the human race” (Proverbs 8:31), are then not simply happenstance or some consequence of the immutable fate of the universe. No, the “affliction” I experience, big and small, has a divine purpose, as it “produces endurance, and endurance, proven character, and proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint” according to today’s Second Reading (Romans 5:3-5), such that we should “even boast of our afflictions” because they flow from the perfect will of God himself.
Today is Trinity Sunday, a time to celebrate as well as reflect upon the nature of God as personal, relational, and yet still terribly and awesomely mysterious. From what I can tell, it’s as good a time as any to remember that I don’t have it all figured out, and that’s quite alright. In fact, that seems to be all in God’s plan.
Isaac Huss is a writer, speaker, godfather, and sports fan from Coon Rapids, Minnesota. He studied Philosophy and Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul and finds those topics best explored over a classic Manhattan. He writes so as to help set the world ablaze. Until then, he lives in Minneapolis, and he is probably cold right now. You can find out more about him HERE.