"That is the worst car accident I have ever seen that someone actually walked away from". These words were spoken by someone who worked in salvage car lot. He was standing next to me looking at my son's car. Yes, my son walked away from the accident with only a concussion and 17 stitches around his right eye and no broken bones. (Yeah, "that's gonna leave a scar".) To give some perspective, the passenger door was bent inward until it was on the driver's side of the car (my son had a bruise on his lung from it). The passenger seat was completely crushed into a space about 5 inches wide. My son was driving and, yes, he survived. Technically, he had to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance, and he had to take a few days off work, but you could say he "walked away from it".
I got the call this last Saturday; just a short time before I was heading out to say Mass. "Are you Mr. Seraiah? Your son has been in a car accident and he asked me to call you." The 45 minute drive to the hospital, that was truly agonizing. I had no idea what I was going to encounter. I had called my wife and she met me at the hospital. On the way over I prayed; a lot. I did pray a few times that God had not chosen this to be the day that my son was to leave the world for eternity. Yet, even more so I prayed that whatever we were going to experience (broken bones, scars, loss of limb, etc...) that the Lord would be there with us through it. The more I prayed this, the harder it was to pray that he would "be OK".
When we pray that someone will be "OK" it is not wrong; certainly not. Yet, it was clear to me in those moments that I had to prepare myself that my son might not be OK after the accident. Sure, he was coherent enough to ask someone to call me, but that did not mean that everything would be OK. The danger is that we are not only praying that someone will be OK, but also somewhat demanding that it be so. We cannot ever demand from God the outcome that we prefer. Instead we have to ask for the outcome we prefer, but be willing to accept that God's wisdom may be different from ours (and often is).
I realized on that drive that whatever our future held for us (and especially for him) that it was all in God's hands. He had chosen that day for us, and He had already determined that He would be there with us. It was that wondrous truth that helped me to keep my composure when I walked into that emergency room. When he reached up and asked to hold my hand, I took his hand with the knowledge that God was present in that room with us, and that He would always be with us -- regardless of what happened. Now, please do not get me wrong; I was not a steely-eyed, cold-hearted machine. Yes, I got emotional quite a few times that day. My emotions, however, did not run rampant; they were under the care of the all powerful grace of our Redeemer.
All this pushed my mind to think of many of the warnings about what the future holds (prophecies of Our Lady of Fatima, Our Lady of Akita, etc.), and the clear signs of the times that things are degenerating at breakneck speed lately. Here we are heading toward a future that seems to be quite frightening, and we do not know what is coming. We have no idea what we are going to experience. Will it be cuts and bruises? Will it be loss of life and limb? Will it be the second coming? We do not know, and yet, we do know something that is more significant than knowing what those trials will be like. We know that Jesus said He would be with us always.
If we truly believe this promise of our Lord, then it will impact our behavior. There are times when we have to grieve, but we are supposed to grieve with hope (cf. 1 Thess 4:13). In fact, we are supposed to do all things with hope; even drive to the hospital to be with an injured son. We are not supposed to grieve with the hope that we will get what we want, but rather the hope that God will take care of our loved ones who pass on to be with Him, and also take care of us who remain so that we can be confident in serving Him.
Are you concerned about the future? If you are not, then you are likely missing something; we have a lot to be concerned about. Should we genuinely worry? No, of course we should not. That is because Jesus has said very specifically that we should not. We do not worry, precisely because it is Jesus Who said not to. When He told the Apostles not to worry, He had just recently warned them about the coming persecution that came upon the Church in the first century where some of the Apostles, and many of the clergy and laity gave their lives for their faith. It was not an empty "hey, don't worry about it". It was an encouraging "thou shalt not worry, because thou hast nothing to worry about with Christ on the throne". Let us take confidence, and keep our hope, in Christ, Who remains with us even when things do get bad.
