Keep Your Eyes On God

16 Apr

“Hold your eyes on God and leave the doing to Him.  That is all the doing you have to worry about.”  ~ St. Jane Francis de Chantal

One of the hardest teachings that I have had to break in my life is the teaching instilled in me by my dad: “If something needs to get done, you’d better do it yourself.  Do not ask for help.  Real men do not ask for help.”  Dad pretty much lived by that motto and he did his best to force it into each of us.  It had become so ingrained that there were times in my younger days that I felt like a real failure because I had to turn to someone else to help me with something.

I think, to a large extent, most of us are like that.  We shun from asking others for help.  We might be afraid that they will think less of us if we do ask for help.  We fear that they might think we are incompetent or uneducated or something.  So, we set about trying to do everything on our own and refrain from asking anyone else to come to our aid.  Even God.

That’s right.  We often fail to ask God to come to our aid because we think that we should be able to handle the things that come our way by ourselves.  We do not want God to think any less of us.  We do not want God to shake His head at us and say, “Why are you asking for help.  Don’t you know that so-and-so did this on his own?”  God would not say that; but, we might fear that He would.

Jane Francis de Chantal breathed hope into all of us when she said told us to let God take care of all the doing.  We should not worry ourselves about that.  Our only worry should be about keeping our eyes fixed on God.  What a great truth that is.  God is bigger than any of us.  He is bigger than any of our problems.  He can fix anything — anything — with nary a worry.  Leave the big stuff up to Him and keep reminding yourself to keep your eyes fixed on God rather than focusing on your worries.

That’s all you need to do to keep on the way to the Kingdom.

FAITH ACTION:  Do not become so lost in the busyness of this week that you take your eyes off of God.