You are not the target – though you may often feel so.

Church is not for Saints, but for sinners. I go often, for I urgently want to be a better man, and alone I cannot stand the bent joints, back rusting through at the core. It works for me. Even in attending mass, a far better drug for me personally, I occasionally fail, at the beguile of a warm bed, a football game or travel.

Pain is a daily part of life. We are forged in trial and trail. We are not meant to arrive at death well-preserved, at peace and all pretty, but battered, bruised and beholden to God for carrying us along the way when we could not longer lift our weary soul. Even Saints suffer horribly, sometimes in death, at the end of their life, sometimes at the beginning, and some, somewhere in between. It is not usually the death that brings sainthood; many are like us, in that we suffer a more silent screaming martyrdom.

In some piece of our lives, each of us suffers some martyring, but we do it, for our God, our spouse, child or neighbor; and grace spills from our heart. Trails of blood are not requisite in martyrdom.

You were not targeted:

Your daughter was not God’s target when she was killed by a drunk driver; God did not target you when you were arrested by a cop for doing something Civilization decided, there needed to be a law against – don’t shoot the messenger; God did not target your spouse, your child, for Cancer; God was not aiming for you when you were hit in that drive by shooting, or when Heroin grabbed you by the throat, and menaced you and everyone near by; God did not choose your soldier for a bullet, or a prosthetic.

I struggle within my pain and myself, to understand; is the hardship because God wanted us to be the light out of the darkness for someone else, perhaps who was blinded in that moment? Does God really only test as far as we can bear, does he test at all? Or is that a pep talk for the determined to be damned? We see many choosing to be a martyr, some are pure of heart; some we find hurting their shoulder patting themselves on the back.

Is life really random, 
or is it mapped by God’s desires, but full of detours made by our choices, 
or is it unequivocally destined?

I don’t know. I do know God did not target you for hate; 
I do know He targeted you for love,

if you let Him.

***

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