ENTERING THE DESERT

Young Adult Scripture Reflection

By: Katie Prejean McGrady

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James 4:13-15

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we shall go into such and such a town, spend a year there doing business, and make a profit”— you have no idea what your life will be like tomorrow. You are a puff of smoke that appears briefly and then disappears. Instead you should say, “If the Lord wills it, we shall live to do this or that.” 

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It’s hard to accept the fact that our lives are fleeting. We only get so many years, time to fill with people we love, work that is fruitful, homes reflecting joy, and faith in pursuit of virtue and holiness. And knowing the time is finite, we decide to fill the time with the people, places, things, and beliefs that have meaning to us, often trying to control what happens at every moment. We take steps to decide what work we do, who we spend the most time with, where we go, worship, and live. We plan, organize, decide, dictate, and order our daily life to look a certain way, all according to the plan we’ve made for ourselves. And in the process, often forget whatever plans God has for us.

We fill our minds with worry about whether we’ll get the job we desperately want, whether the major we chose was the right one, with the most promising career path. We anxiously swipe through social media, planning our posts and filtering the moments to look a certain way to catch the eye of so-and-so, the person we want to notice us the most. We hurriedly fill the calendar with meetings and work happy hours, with extracurricular activities across campus, with unstructured fun time, because we know if we don’t schedule it, then we won’t do it. And when someone asks us “how are you,” we quickly answer, “good, fine, busy…” as if it is good that we are merely fine and oh so busy. And in the process, we’re often too rushed and stressed to notice what God may be doing for us.

We rush through life, and fill it with constant things and people and noise, because we’re terrified to pause, for even a brief moment, and contemplate the idea that we are a puff of smoke, who only has this one life, which should be lived for God, not just ourselves. We try to control – over planning and over scheduling – out of fear that God has nothing good to give us or fear that he will ask something great of us.

But the way to live life to the full – to eek out every good thing from this puff of smoke life we’ve been given – is to focus our attention and efforts on knowing the will of God and following his plan for our lives. This can only be done if we stop the over planning and stop the anxious controlling, and instead look to the Lord and say the very same thing Jesus said in the Garden: not my will, but Yours. Our prayer, and effort, should simply be “You, Lord, not just me.” And then our lives will be filled with the people, the places, the things, and the work that he wants for us, not just the things we’ve imagined or done for ourselves.

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That’s all fine and good to say, and believe, when life is “normal.” It’s far harder to believe, and do, in the midst of a pandemic, where we find ourselves out of work, isolated from friends and family, questioning any divine plan that could possibly have a good outcome in the face of uncertainty, suffering, and death.

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But perhaps that’s precisely when we’re meant to say it, and do it, the most. That it’s far easier to control our own lives when things are easy, but far more necessary to give God control – to trust his will above our own – when things are quite hard. We can imagine what life will be like tomorrow when all of planet earth is not facing a deadly virus that spreads like wildfire. But that is what we’re facing, and so tomorrow, as uncertain as it may be, and as stressful and scary and fleeting life may seem right now, is precisely the right time to look to the Lord and say, “I don’t know how to control this, but I know how to give control of my life to you, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

Reflection Questions

1.  What control can you give back to God today? Is it a part of your schedule, maybe a little bit of your energy and focus? Is it control over some desires or hopes you’ve been holding onto? What have you controlled and hidden from God that you can give back to him today?

2.  Where are you too busy? How has this time of social distancing and quarantine forced you to slow down? How are you responding to that? How has it made you feel? What can you do to embrace the “forced slowdown” with a positive, grateful attitude?

Katie Prejean McGrady is an international Catholic speaker, author, and podcaster living in Lake Charles, Louisiana with her husband and daughter. Her work can be found at avemariapress.com and on the Ave Explores podcast.

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