We are familiar with a ‘blessing in disguise’. Our life is filled with more of such blessings than we are aware of. A friend lost her job leaving her betrayed. Her eyes searched the heavens, “Why God?” A few months later she lands a dream job, an eventuality resulting from a series of events that began from that bitter loss. Our life is full of such intricate patterns. Our life’s master weaver is always at work.

Our life is a journey of events, one event after another. Things will continue to happen to us, one day and every day. We have little control. We will have our fair share of difficulties. Some events will conspire to leave us broken. Our eyes bleary, our hearts disheartened, “God, where are you?”

“After the earthquake came a fire. But the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire there came the sound of a gentle breeze. And when Elijah heard this, he covered his face with his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.” (First Reading)

We live in a time where much is available at the click of a mouse. But even the mouse has since moved on and replaced by a touch on the screen. We are also no longer patient with God. Becoming more competent as a human race has made us more reliant on ourselves. But life remains unchanged, continuing to take its course through events. When something unexpected happens, crushing our expectations and hopes, we expect God to appear in the mighty winds, earthquakes, and fires of our life.

The master weaver works gently and silently beneath the rubble of our crushed hope. He weaves every suffering towards peace, stitch every wound to heal. He is a fussy weaver paying attention to the smallest detail, often going back into our past to heal a small wound that we didn’t care much about. With an uncanny vision he puts together mismatching colours, linking seemingly unrelated events to bring about many blessings in disguise. He turns our scars into beautiful intricate patterns.

We must live with more patience accepting each unfortunate event that occurs in our life with faith that the master weaver will use it to make our life more beautiful than we can imagine. Sometimes the big patches of ugly patterns and designs are there for a lifetime. We are not able to conjure up any need for or beauty in them. A lifetime of suffering though can end in one short final chapter. This short final chapter make sense of every event that had happened. In one weave, the ugly patterns and designs are turned into an intricate art piece of supreme beauty.

Life is a journey of understanding and a journey into believing. Each scar turned into a pattern grows faith. But faith must come before a greater understanding. The lessons of faith can be found in our personal life history. We only have to look back into our life and join the events that happened to uncover the disguises and see how blessed we truly are. To find that God came in the gentle breezes.

It will only be from a life experiencing the Holy Spirit that water will feel firm enough to walk on. In faith, we walk on our trials and tribulations and they won’t sink us. Only then will come understanding. (Gospel)

19^th Sunday in Ordinary Time