God does not choose the qualified, he qualifies the chosen.
God knows that I am not perfect. I present myself to the best of my ability and (most of the time) I try my very best to do things well, but in reality, I am very often deficient in many things.
Usually – perhaps because of my nature and my upbringing – I tend to wait until my deficiencies are brought somewhat under control before I approach a task. This involves me waiting a little and biding my time while I get everything lined up and in place so that I can act – and act definitively – when the time is right… But this is not the only way to approach a problem. Another way that I could chose to approach a task is to begin in a moment and then figure out how to circumvent the deficiencies as I go along. And this is the way that one of my sisters tends to approach her life. She does not worry about how well she will be able to handle every single stage of the task, she focuses only on the first little bit and then as she moves through the task and she encounters a deficiency, then and only then does she worry about those deficiencies.
Now, the result of this is that I tend to present things more carefully and tend to make fewer mistakes, but she tends to do revolutionary things that make more of a difference and which are more exciting…
And I have been thinking about that today.
Once, I heard a priest say in his Homily on one Sunday during Holy Mass, God does not choose the qualified, he qualifies the chosen. And I have always remembered this phrase.
Saint Josemaria said the same thing but in a different way when he said, “God usually seeks out deficient instruments.” In “Christ is passing” Saint Josemaria says, at page 3, “If we are humble, we can understand all the marvel of our divine vocation. The hand of Christ has snatched us from a wheat field; the sower squeezes the handful of wheat in his wounded palm. The blood of Christ bathes the seed, soaking it. Then the Lord tosses the wheat to the winds, so that in dying it becomes life and in sinking into the ground it multiplies itself.”
And I have been thinking about that today.
For it seems to me that I need to adopt the approach of my sister and accept my deficiencies and get started irrespective of them – for God is reaching out for me and He does not care that I am not yet perfectly ready. In fact, it is perhaps for the humility that it will purchase for me, that my Beloved choses me FOR those deficiencies rather than despite them.
And that is something to reflect upon today – if I can pray for the Grace to reflect on that with a humble heart…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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