Fountain of Thoughts

(For someone whose default is holding them back)

What you focus on becomes powerful.

It’s a basic fact of how our brains are built. When we focus on something, our brains will literally re-wire themselves. To make focusing on that thing easier. To make it easier for us to think about that thing. Making it more likely that we will go back to that thing. Again and again.

It’s the science behind memory. It’s why we remember certain songs from childhood so well. We sang them so many times that our brains have been hard-wired for that song.

When something gets hard-wired in our brains, it becomes our default. Our unthinking go-to whenever that need arises. Especially in times of stress or crisis.

What you focus on becomes powerful.

The obvious danger? What if we’re hard-wired for the wrong thing?

What if our default, our unthinking go-to is something or someone that fails us when we need them most?

If something or someone your brain is hard-wired for fails you in time of crisis, it’s not just a fail on their part. Because of that hard-wiring, it’s going to feel like a betrayal. No matter how much you tell yourself why they couldn’t have helped, why they didn’t mean to. No matter how much you try to rationalize it. For you, it will still be a betrayal.

For your hard-wired brain, it’s a gut punch. Because that something or someone has become that powerful for you, that betrayal will hurt you on the deepest level.

Which is why the Gospels are so adamant about focusing on the only One who never comes up short. About making the one who is that powerful for you the only One who never fails. God.

The most loving, kind person in the world will still fall short. Still makes mistakes. Is still human.

To allow any human being to become that powerful for you is to set yourself up for that horrible, gut-wrenching feeling of betrayal when they inevitably fall short.

Focus on God. Let God become powerful in your life.

Not only will you never have to worry about that horrible, gut-wrenching feeling of betrayal from the One who never falls short.

But with your focus on God, God will give you the grace to understand, love, and even forgive the people in your life. When they inevitably fall short.

The bottom line – even if you don’t mean to, you will focus on something. Which is why it’s so important to intentionally choose to focus on God.

Because what you focus on becomes powerful.

Some people are angry with God.

It’s one of the saddest things. Not because they’re bad people for being angry with God. But because of what they went through to get angry with God.

When someone is angry with God, it’s a sign of someone who is hurting.

Someone who is angry with God needs our love and understanding. Because something terrible has happened in their lives. Whether it’s death or divorce, illness or financial loss, whatever it was hurt them. Deeply.

No matter how solid you and I think our faith is, we can set ourselves up to be angry with God. All it takes is an “unless list.”

You see it in the Gospel. Thomas doubts the Resurrection, then launches into his “unless” list.

“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands. Unless I put my finger into the nailmarks. Unless I put my hand into his side. I will not believe.”

Translation – “Unless it happens my way. Unless I get everything I want. Unless it meets my expectations.”

Thomas is setting himself up to be angry with God. Just like you and I do. Whenever we have an “unless” list.

The only difference between Thomas and us? Thomas is open about his “unless” list. You and I aren’t open about it. Usually, you and I don’t even tell ourselves about our “unless” list.

Instead, we make assumptions about how things have to be. Then pour concrete around them.

And get angry when the world doesn’t conform to our unspoken “unless” list.

Think about it. We cut off friends and family who treat us like that. We quit jobs when we have bosses like that. That’s how miserable it is to have someone angry at us because we didn’t check the boxes on their secret “unless” list.

The only thing more miserable than being around someone with a secret “unless” list? Being someone with a secret “unless” list.

It’s a sure-fire way to ruin any relationship. Including your relationship with God.

Putting an “unless” list into your relationship with God – telling God how things have to be, putting human limitations on the Almighty – is a recipe to be angry with God. Because God doesn’t always do things our way.

God always provides. But sometimes, instead of delivering us from the problem like we want, God gives us the strength to get through the problem.

God wants to bless us. But sometimes we miss the blessing, because God didn’t do it our way.

God has nothing but the best in His heart for us. But we miss out on God’s best, every time we insist on the list.

It’s time to throw some things out. Starting with our “unless” list.

To love with such a heart means to cast aside any inane notions of conditions or boundaries. To love, we must be vulnerable. The root of this word (vulnus) is Latin for “wound.” To love fully and to love like Jesus means to strip ourselves of any guards, to wreck the dividing walls, and to welcome any wounds as a kiss.

We must pray to be willing - to be daring - to imitate such a reckless, yet beautiful, love.

To love the saint.

To love the sinner.

To love the racist.

To love the activist.

To love the LGBT person.

To love the forgotten.

To love the rich.

To love the poor.

To love the friend.

To love the foe.

To love those who love us.

To love those who leave us empty.

To love those who we agree with.

To love those we wish we could live without.

To love the annoying one.

To love the prideful ones.

To love the sex addicted.

To love the drug dealer.

To love when it’s easy.

To love when it’s hard.

And in it all, to pray that we’d be willing to take on the cross of accepting that same love from God and neighbor. God is love. Love calls us to love one another as we love ourselves.

The Sacred Heart that beats for the multitudes of Creation beats for us too. For you. For me.

So we must love with complete abandon.

We must love one another, even when it hurts like hell.

We must also allow the warmth of affirmation pierce our hardened hearts and accept the love of the Father.

“This is love: not that we love God, but that He loved us.”

Things happen.

Not necessarily for a reason. Sometimes things just happen.

One of the great mistakes of our age is assuming causation. That good things happen because we’re good. And that bad things happen because we’re bad.

A moment’s thought reveals this as nonsense.

In all of our lives, right now some of the most kind, loving, and godly people we know are dealing with life’s hardest problems.

Watching the ones in my life, seeing the holy way that they’re responding to what they’re dealing with? The way that they hold all the more tightly to God and to each other through it all. The character that shines forth in their response is one of the most powerful witnesses to the Faith that I’ve ever seen.

And yet, you and I keep coming back to that broken old assumption. That good things happen because we’re good. And that bad things happen because we’re bad.

This is exactly what Jesus is pushing back against in today’s Gospel. Because it turns out that our great mistake is nothing new. People have been coming back to that broken old assumption for millennia.

But nothing about it has changed. It wasn’t true in the first century. And still isn’t.

Here’s the truth – bad things don’t happen because we’re bad. Bad things happen.

When bad things happen, we get to respond. The choice of how to respond is ours.

The point Jesus is making is that how we respond to bad things determines whether they harm us beyond any physical loss or damage.

The opposite is also true. How we respond to bad things determines whether they become occasions of grace.

The choice is ours. But no matter how we respond, one thing is true.

How we respond shows who we really believe in.