Filling
the Hole: Facing Suffering with Hope & Faith
Colossians 1:23
We live in a world full of suffering from
injustice, illness, and the perils in the world. It seems we are given an
impossible task and the presence of these in the world causes anxiety and
worry.
As Christians, we are not to be anxious or worried.
Instead, we are to be firmly grounded and steadfast in our faith. In weakness,
we can become shaken, loose our footing and fall into a hole of anxiety and
worry.
In St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians he tells how
to be firmly grounded, steadfast, and unshaken; by putting your hope in the
Gospel. In this we can connect to the One who is unmovable, through Jesus
Christ. It is faith and hope that must
be the anchor at our center. Faith and hope must be inside us because in these
the Holy Spirit resides.
It is faith and hope that are the origins of our
prayer life. They are the refuge of peace from where we face the sufferings of
illness, injustice, and the perils of the world.
There is a story about St. Augustine walking on the
beach contemplating the mystery of God, the Trinity. He sees a boy in front of
him who had dug a hole in the sand and was going out to the sea and bringing
some water to pour into the hole. The boy kept doing it again and again.
St. Augustine asked, “What are you doing?” The boy
answered, “I’m going to pour the entire ocean into this hole.”
“That is
impossible, the whole ocean will not fit in the hole you’ve made” said St.
Augustine.
The boy replied, “You cannot fit the mystery of the
Trinity and God in your tiny little brain.” The boy vanished; St. Augustine had
been talking to an angel.
Trying to answer why things happen is like trying
to fill that hole. It seems impossible. We don't control creation. We'll never
truly understand the mystery of God; but, we have been given faith and hope. In
these, Christ Jesus gave us strength to face the sufferings of our world and
fill the holes in our lives.
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