“Nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.” —Luke 22:42
Until my friend Sarah called, I thought I was having a bad day. The things I wanted to happen at my office weren’t happening—at least not the way I wanted them to—and all morning I had been shooting God what could only be called metaphysical dirty looks. Then the phone on my desk burbled. Had Sarah not identified herself, I never would have recognized her voice. She was crying.
“I just needed to call someone,” she said.
“Bad day?” I asked.
“Bad life,” she retorted. I knew through our mutual good friends that Sarah’s mother was gravely ill, and that her job had changed, and that she and her fiancé had recently postponed their wedding. My own problems began to shrivel.
“What happens,” she wanted to know, “if the things you hope for most in your life, the things you’ve dreamed about since you were little, are not part of God’s plan for you?”
It was not a question I was prepared for in the middle of a busy workday, and I groped for something reassuring to tell Sarah. But while I was fumbling with a well-meant platitude, she interrupted me and answered her own question. “I guess the thing I have to pray for is to accept God’s will for me.”
I knew Sarah well enough to know that she really didn’t believe that she was having a bad life, and that when she hung up the phone she would do exactly what she said: Say a prayer of acceptance rather than a prayer of demand. What she probably didn’t know was that because of her call, I would be praying the same prayer.
God, You made me flexible so that I can bend. I must remember: Thy will, not mine.
