The boy pushing the wheelchair stopped at the foot of the steps, unsure of how to navigate them. “There’s only three, I can do it,” said his brother, and carefully stood up from the chair to climb them himself.
“It’s a miracle! He can walk!” shouted the first boy. At which announcement, the whole cafeteria broke into cheers and applause—“Praise the Lord!” “Hallelujah!”—and an embarrassed youth minister ran to calm everyone down.
Photo by Victor Rodriguez on Unsplash
Years later, my sons (for they were the boys) still laugh at the joke. But the one who spent that weekend in a wheelchair speaks of the difference it made that they were at a Catholic conference and not in their public high school. The other kids may have known it wasn’t a miracle, but their wild cheering (and their questions later that day) said they knew it could happen. The Holy Spirit was present in that place, blowing doubt away and filling the air with possibility.
“Mom, it was so cool,” my son told me later: “just being with a bunch of Catholics together and trusting and knowing the reality of God.”
Do you trust and know the reality of God?
Do you see him behind the scenes, at work in your life?
Has he lifted you from your old way of “walking” according to your own whims and desires, to walk in his light, with his direction and strength?
I’m reminded of Saint Paul’s prayer for the Ephesians: “that according to the riches of [God’s] glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being.” The whole passage is worth spending time on (see Eph 3:14-21—or better yet, the whole letter!), but for now, just think of that one phrase. The thought that God, through his Spirit, can fill us with inner strength.
It’s so easy to feel like we can’t walk on our own. We can feel helpless, not up to the task, unable to do the things we’d like to do or should do. But the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is available to lift us up, to fill us “with all the fullness of God,” as Paul says.
Let’s join together in trusting and knowing the reality of God. Let’s start from the premise that GOD IS ABLE and then look for him to act. Let’s remind one another to trust in his power to give us inner strength. With Saint Paul, let us pray:
“…that according to the riches of [God’s] glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being,
so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—
that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,
that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us,
to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
—Ephesians 3:16-21 (ESV-CE; emphasis mine)
© 2020 Sarah Christmyer
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- Have Faith in the Fire
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