[Jesus said:] "Which one of you would hand his son a stone when he asks for a loaf of bread, or a snake when he asks for a fish? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him."

Tyler Doherty, an eight year old boy, has cancer. The fact itself is enough to initiate questions that begin with "why?". The movie "Letters to God" not only presents the tragedy of the disease in young Tyler Doherty's life. It also presents how God works in the lives of people. Tyler has a simple faith in God, a faith that leads him to write to God about the way he feels and his eventual acceptance of his fate. Those letters eventually find their way to a person with a very troubled life, an unsuspecting substitute mailman, Brady McDaniels. Through the letters, the faith of the young man, and the interaction of concerned people, Brady and the viewer of the movie finally begins to understand what God must want for our world.            

Without doubt, the fact that people who do not believe in God present as their principal argument against God is the existence of evil in the world. How could a good God have created a world that has so much evil in it--the tragedies of disease, natural disasters, evil men and women, deaths of people who, it seems, deserve to live. To be sure, the believer does not have an easy answer to the question. He/she may have a partial answer from the book of Genesis, namely that God did create a good world, but men messed it up in one way or another (Genesis 2, 3). But the full answer lies only with God.

Human beings may not understand how God works in the world. But a person of faith will believe that God is working in God's own time and manner. Not only that--the believer will also understand that God works in a good way as God works in the world. Studying the situations of our world, especially the difficult ones, we quickly find that when human beings have a tendency to mess things up, over time God straightens up the mess leading to good.

What God wants for our world is nothing less than the best that can happen, given the situations in which we place ourselves. Jesus assures us that God will only give good things to those who ask of him. The difficult thing for us is that we think that we know what the good things are, even though we cannot see the future nor the consequences of what we are praying for. Only God does, and so, if we are believers in God, we must allow our prayers of petition to be nothing more than suggestions to a God who knows more than we do.

God will never give us a stone instead of bread or a snake instead of a fish. And the truth is that only God knows whether something is a "stone" or a "snake." God always leads us to better ourselves, even using tragedies to do it.

THOUGHT
 
PRAYER

Good and gracious God, there are many difficult situations in our world, situations that we have brought about in some way. Give us the grace to see the good that you are bringing to us, even when situations are difficult. Be with us, we pray. 

Questions, comments? Let me know. Email Fr. Mike

©2007 Capuchin Province of Mid-America
Fr. Mike Scully is a member of the Capuchin Province of Mid-America