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Learning from difficult people
Fr Chris Thomas from the Emmaus Family of Prayer explains how God often uses people we find difficult, to help us come to self knowledge and grow in holiness.
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Once upon a time there was an old man who loved his land with a deep passion. When he knew he was about to die his family brought him out of his house and laid him on his beloved land. As he was about to draw his last breath the old man clutched some earth in his hands and died. He went to heaven and God came out to meet him. He stretched out his hands to lead him through the gates but the old man's hands were full of soil and he couldn't take God's hands. God pleaded with him to let the soil go." "Never!" cried the old man, stepping back. "Never!" And so God sadly left the old man outside the gates of heaven. Some time later God came out again, and tried to persuade the old man to let go of his soil, and once more the old man refused. Eventually God came out once more and called to the old man. The old man nodded as he looked at God and began slowly to move towards him. By this time he had grown very old and was very arthritic. His arthritis was so painful that he had to prop up the right hand holding his beloved soil with his left hand. As he moved towards God his gnarled fingers would no longer stay clenched, with the result that the soil sifted out between them until his hand was empty and so empty-handed, he entered heaven. "Letting Go" It always seems to me that much of the spiritual journey is a process of letting go. That might seem strange to reflect on if you grew up in a religious culture which seemed to think that holiness was about the graces we amass which eventually get us into heaven. The spiritual journey is in fact the opposite. It's a constant letting go of our own understanding about life and about God in order to discover real life. Because most of us don't want to let go we either consciously or subconsciously play games with ourselves and with other people. We pretend that we're something we're not to cover up our insecurities, anxieties and fears. We project on to others the very things that we try to hide within ourselves. We blame others for their arrogance, their pride, their vulnerability. We focus on the splinter in our brother or sister's eye without really dealing with the plank in our own eye. We'd do anything to stop us looking at those things in ourselves. We'd rather stay with what we have than respond to the call to live in the reality of God. We'd rather live in the shadow of illusion and so we go on hiding behind our masks and pretending that we understand what life is about trying to show the world that we're perfect. At some point in our lives we have to face who we are, warts and all. That's the point of the story that Luke tells us about the Pharisee and the tax collector. We have to strip away the illusions that we have about ourselves and face our brokenness, pain and our need. "Facing the Truth about ourselves" I think that, to enable us to enter into that process of letting go, God sends people into our lives to enable us to help us walk the journey. They're usually the last people we would expect. They're the people who make us feel uncomfortable, the ones who make us angry and self righteous. They're often people who speak into things that we've buried from our pasts that we need to face. They're seldom those people that agree with us and make us feel good about ourselves. They're not often those who tell us how good we are or how perfect we are but in fact those who make us feel the very opposite. I think that's one of the reasons why Jesus told the Scribes and the Pharisees when you give a party invite the very ones you find difficult. It will be those people through whom God will speak and who will lead us to holiness. Why? Because they can make us face the truth about ourselves if we only have the humility to ask ourselves what is God doing through them. "Importance of facing our weaknesses" I often think that God uses the very things within ourselves that we try to cover up to lead us to him. It's by facing our own negativity and owning it rather than hiding away from it that we can begin the process of letting go. It's somehow in the melee of feelings and emotions that we have within ourselves that God can teach us that we're not in control of ourselves and our lives. I don't believe that anything in our lives is wasted if we only have ears to hear. In every situation, in every relationship, in every feeling or emotion that we have God is inviting us to let go and is drawing us closer into the mystery that is the relationship between God and humanity. It's a place where we stand naked and vulnerable, aware that we have nothing but the grace of God.
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