When I began this journey of gratitude over two years ago, I followed a schedule of prompts that suggested things for which to be thankful. One of the recurring suggestions was called "hard eucharistos," the hard blessings of God. It's largely a foreign concept for us North American Christians, indoctrinated as we are with variations of the Prosperity Gospel that considers it axiomatic that God's purposes for us always lean towards health, success, and the absence of failure, disappointment, suffering, and loss. Our brothers and sisters in Africa, the Middle East, and the Orient are much more Biblical than we, knowing as they do that it is through much suffering that we enter the kingdom of God (Acts 14:22). In our way of thinking, it doesn't make sense that God's blessing may not result in our well being. This is indeed, a hard teaching.
It's nearly 10:00 pm, and Linda and I have just gotten home from the ER in Jamestown, where our granddaughter Alexandria has undergone tests to try to determine the cause of her headaches and fever. Having just returned from six weeks in Uganda, there's no shortage of weird possibilities. They've ruled out malaria, but are suspecting some sort of parasitic fever. So we've been praying. Without ceasing, as St. Paul commands. That is one command that right now is easy to obey. What is hard is his directive to give thanks in all things (1 Thessalonians 5:18). I haven't yet figured out how to give thanks for my granddaughter's illness. The closest I'm able to come right now is gratitude for her parents not ignoring or minimizing her symptoms, for her doctor who instead of seeing her, sent her directly to the hospital for tests, for the people who are caring for her as I write, and for those I'll never meet whose research has made possible the detection and treatment of diseases most of us can't even pronounce.
I don't like having to learn to pray at the expense of my granddaughter, but I am grateful that I have recourse to prayer. Just stewing in worry is never a good thing, and while my heart is anxious and my mind can conjure up all sorts of bad scenarios, I still take comfort in the love and mercy of my Heavenly Father whose love for Alex is far greater than mine ever could be.
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