S.J.

I felt only a simple sense of gratitude to God for having sustained me through those years and, in his providence, bringing me home again at last.

or every man’s life contains its share of suffering; each of us is occasionally driven almost to despair, to ask why God allows evil and suffering to overtake him or those he loves.

He had stripped away from me many of the external consolations, physical and religious, that men rely on and had left me with a core of seemingly simple truths to guide me

returning unbidden to mind:

ike a fond and loving father, he was trying to wean them away from trust in kings or princes or in armies or the powers of this world. He was trying to teach them, again and again, that their faith must only be in him alone.

that God alone is faithful in all tribulations, that he alone is constant in his love and must be clung to, even when it seems all else has been turned upside down. Yahweh is still the Lord behind the events and happenings of this world; he can be found there, and he must be sought in them, so that his will may be done. It was he who had chosen them, not they him. It was he who had first made the covenant with them, who had led them and cared

in times of peace and prosperity, Israel came to take Yahweh for granted, to settle down in some routine and to accept the status quo as the be-all and the end-all, to think of the established order as their support and sustenance, and to forget their ultimate goal and destiny as the people of the covenant.

That same lesson each of us must learn, difficult or not. How easy it is, in times of ease, for us to become dependent on our routines, on

Somehow, then, God must contrive to break through those routines of ours and remind us once again, like Israel, that we are ultimately dependent only upon him, that he has made us and destine

ven if at first our thoughts are questioning and full of reproaches.