Job 3:1-3, 11-17, 20-23 / Lk 9:51-56
There are lots of people in this world with smiley faces, wishing us to “have a nice day.” Indeed, our culture seems determined to have us smile, and not just when the camera is about to do its deed. We have to wonder what’s going on behind all the smiles. How many lives of quiet despair lie hidden there. How many soft voices are whispering Job’s prayer? “Perish the day I was born, the night when they said, ‘The child is a boy.’”
That prayer can find resonance in most hearts from time to time, especially when, as it was for Job, the burdens of life are successively compounding and there seems no end to the troubles. Where do we go then, when all the little “happy thoughts” and all the surface strategies for bringing back smiles are obviously “out-gunned” by a factor of a thousand?
There is only one place to go, and that’s where we should have gone in the good times so we’d get to know the way. Turn inward to the Spirit who has dwelt within each of us from the moment of our birth, the Spirit who is our Counselor and Guide, our Consoler and our Wisdom. Rest with the Spirit awhile every day, and know you are not alone.
Know for sure that deep inside you is good reason to smile always!