God, why don’t you make my wish come true?

[Mary Naeem]

God, why don’t you make my wish come true?

What is going on with us? We want God to favor us by indulging our whims. In spiritual life, though, the main issue is to suffer loss. Let yourself suffer the loss of things which are irrelevant to Christ, which are not of Christ. Once free of them, you can devote yourself completely to God. If, however, you show you want such things (a career, success, glory and an easy life), God will grant them to you as if by saying, “Is this what you want? There you go, enjoy”. And all you are left with, is this.

It is a big mistake that we are partial to having things happen as we wish.

Extreme accuracy, that is, being extremely strict about insignificant, mostly unreal things, is a proof that, deep down, man is covering up some feeling of guilt, which was perhaps forgotten.

Archimandrite Symeon Kragiopoulos (†)