Impermanence Doesn’t Mean Insignificance

Perhaps you feel that much of your participation in the Lord’s plan for your life is waiting.

Waiting for a good job to become available to apply for. Waiting to see if you are truly in the right major. Waiting to see if you should be pursuing this vocation or that vocation. Waiting for a ring. Waiting for the perfect first date. Waiting for your singleness to finally be over. Waiting for a baby. Waiting for your “cross of _____” to just… come to an end. 

For the fact that this type of rhetoric has surrounded you, you are not alone. It surrounded me for years, too.

That type of thinking isn’t from the Lord. 

It isn’t from Him because it doesn’t bring about any peace. It just tells us that the grass is always greener on the other side. 

If I could offer the TRUTH, rather, about waiting as your participation in the Lord’s plan…

Everything is part of it.

“Life with Christ is a wonderful adventure,” as Pope John Paul II says.

The Lord’s promises do not ONLY lie in the future. You don’t need to hit a certain level of adulthood or certain phase of life to receive them. You don’t have to wait a set amount of time in order to finally be granted access to them. 

His promises for you lie in the present. His grace. His love. His mercy. His forgiveness. His freedom. His compassion.

No time in the Lord’s plan for your life is wasted. He has thought, planned, loved, every minute, every step. He knows your heart and He knows it well. And where He has you—right now—it may last for days, months, or years. But that doesn’t, at all, speak to the value of sanctification that it brings to your soul. 

Just because this time in your life may be impermanent, doesn’t mean it’s not significant.

And it may be hard to push aside the rhetoric that the next step from now will always be better, and it may take a lot of intentional effort to tell yourself that there is something of value about where you are right now, but it’s what we ought to do as His beloved. 

So if you haven’t heard it lately, let me be the one to let you know:

Where you are right now is not a waste of your time. 

There is value in this phase of your life. 

There is grace and growth and peace that He wishes to give you through where you are right now.

He has you here on purpose. 

He believes in you whole-heartedly.

Just because this time is not permanent doesn’t mean there isn’t value. 

In fact, impermanence could MEAN there is great value to be had for the sanctification of your heart and soul.

The determination is not for us to decide, but simply have faith in. 

Have faith in the Father who we know loves us so well. 

Who we know would never leave us alone. 

Who we know has a plan for us beyond today or next week or next year.

Have determination, have faith, that there is true goodness to be found for you today. 

You never know what He could do with it tomorrow. 

“There are times when He Himself allows terrible sufferings, and then again there are times when He does not let me suffer and removes everything that might afflict my soul. These are His ways, unfathomable and incomprehensible to us. It is for us to submit ourselves completely to His holy will. There are mysteries that the human mind will never fathom here on earth; eternity will reveal them.” (1656) ~Saint Faustina