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The Ever Coming God
Fr Chris Thomas, the director of the Irenaeus Project in the Liverpool diocese, and a member of the Emmaus Family of Prayer, explains how God is always there to help us in our need
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She told how nine years earlier she had been diagnosed with cancer. At the time she had three children all of whom were very small. She and her husband had been having difficulties and at that low point in her life he decided to leave her for someone else. Ill with cancer and abandoned by her husband it seemed as if her whole life was falling apart. She spent night after night crying, wondering what the future held for her and her children. Then her father-in-law who was a great support to her and whom she relied on a great deal, suddenly dropped dead. Help Me! As a result of all that was happening she had to give up the family home and move in with her parents. She told us that she'd stopped going to Church many years earlier although she had always prayed. One night sick from chemotherapy, alone in her childhood bedroom, wondering whether she should end it all, she cried out to God in the depth of her need. 'Help me!'. She said that she felt every bone in her body begging for help in those two little words. At that moment she felt a tangible touch on her hand and her very being was flooded with peace and she knew that everything would be all right. People listened as she told us that over the next few months she began to rebuild her life. She returned to the practice of her faith. She found strength to forgive her husband and they managed to put their relationship back together. The hurt she felt over her father-in-law's death was gently healed and the cancer that threatened to take her life never returned. The greatest blessing, however, she said, was the knowledge she now had deep within her that God was real and alive. There was silence as she finished her story. I could feel the Spirit was at work convicting people of the truth of God's presence. It was a powerful moment in the retreat and a story that I will never forget. God will not be bound by the way in which we expect God to work Since that week I've reflected on what happened and have come to realise a truth that I have always known, but which was re enforced as I listened to that woman. It's this: that God will not be bound by the way in which we expect God to work. That woman had nothing to do with Church life. She wasn't at Mass. She wasn't a Eucharistic Minister and even now has probably never heard of Charismatic Renewal. She was simply someone who recognised her own powerlessness and who cried out to God in her pain and anguish and somehow in her brokenness recognised the touch of God. Even when we cry out to God we're still trying to fix things Most of us are so well protected that we never quite manage to touch our own powerlessness. We never quite manage to let go of control. Somehow we cling on to our own strength and our own capabilities so that even when we cry out to God we're still trying to fix things. It seems as though we human beings can only recognise the ever-coming God when we begin to realise that we are not in control and that we really don't have a great deal of power to do anything. Then we know the truth that God and God alone is all that we need. Somehow then we're free to recognise and know God's presence. Not a presence that will necessarily fix things for us but a presence that assures us that as Julian of Norwich said ultimately 'all will be well, all manner of things will be well.' Advent a time for facing ourselves Advent is a time for facing ourselves and looking at the ways in which our lives are governed by our drive for power and control. It's a time when we begin to let go of some of the needs that we have, which shield us from the truth of God's presence. The ever coming God can break through into any situation and into anyone's life if we can find the courage to let go of our need to be in charge and in control. Don't waste this Advent by simply preparing for Christmas. Take time every day to look at the ways in which you protect yourself. Touch your powerlessness and in touching it, recognise the ever coming God who was born in a stable at Bethlehem and who is born within us every moment of every day if we only care to recognise that coming.
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It
was in the middle of a Parish retreat that I was organising and I
asked people to share their experiences of the action of the Holy
Spirit in their lives. Among the experiences was that of a woman that
I still remember vividly today. 
