I pray everyday but I do not consider myself particularly religious. I try to be a good person but I know there are a lot of bad things in me. Even my online persona is most likely different from the person that I really am. I try to be a person of Faith; but like Mother Teresa I am beset by frequent bouts of doubts. What is there were no God after all? Like her, I say “I will believe anyway.” What if there were no after life? “I will do good anyway.” What if love and compassion are actually the ways of the loser? “I will love and be compassionate anyway.”
Like the Jews of old, I sometimes challenge God to give me a sign of his greatness and of his presence in my life. Sometimes, I wish God would show himself to me in wind and thunder to remove any shadow of doubt that He is in my life. Sometimes, I wish I could hear his voice and I would do anything he would bid me to do. But that would be like tempting God.
Christ did perform signs and wonders during his time but not in order that people may believe ( Except perhaps that one time when he forgave the sins of the blind man and doubters started grumbling and he restored the sight of the blins man just so the doubters would believe.) He did his miracles out of love and compassion as when he fed thousands. He did his miracles because people already believed. “Your faith has made you whole.” God uses the ordinary to teach us the extraordinary. God uses the human to reveal to us the divine. God chose ordinary people to bring His gospel to the ends of the earth. And bring to the ends of the earth they did: St James to the western edge of the known world at that time in Spanish Galicia and St. Thomas to the eastern end in Kerala India.
I sought to see God so that I can truly believe in Him. He was silent but He sent me the rustle of the wind for me to feel His caress; He walked me through the changing of the seasons for me to see that He is journeying with me; He blessed me with the beauty and grandeur of nature for me to realize the Source of such beauty and grandeur. I tried to learn and understand love and compassion. He gave me His Word that I might believe and live. He has blessed me with people who love me and show me compassion so that I might come to know Him through them. And today, i am especially grateful for one person who is celebrating her birthday and who has brought so much love and compassion into my life – Kathleen.
Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddeus; Simon the Cananaean, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.
Matthew 10:1-7