Page 3 - praiseandthanks
P. 3
there has to be a way through the maze of life’s many traumas,
there has to be a way of dealing with them that leads
somewhere for the soul leaning on God. I have to remark here
that in the area of free will it is not always as easy as with
material things. How often I found artefacts for the museum we
built on our mission at Kalumburu, only when I admitted that
finding things was beyond me, especially when I had lost a lot
of eyesight. I would praise Him very sincerely for the fact that I
couldn’t find anything and thank Him for that. I would leave it to
Him then glad of the occasion as such to praise and thank Him.
Something always seemed to turn up. There was no case for
manipulating Him. He would see through it. Calming people
down in fights through praising Jesus for all the fighters entered
into the area of free will. Praising Jesus for the people who
didn’t come to His Mass sometimes involved a tireless praise of
many years. The fruit of this would be an unending trust growth
in love and peace.
We built a museum on the mission in stone and when we
finished the wall the administrator said to me that we had no
way of placing the purlins on top of the wall with which to attach
the roof. They were heavy steel and they were very big. So he
said to me, “you’re the priest; go and ask God what to do.” I
said, “great, have you got His phone number?” I was being silly,
but I went off and said to Him that we were in a mess and had
no way out of it. We were 500 km from the nearest town. I was
not about to suggest to Him what He should do. I said, “You are
God. I am not God, so that’s why I am simply praising You and
thanking You for the mess we’re in. It’s a good opportunity to
trust.” I came back to the administrator who wanted to know
what God had said to me. I made something up for a joke but
then said we just had to wait on Him, if indeed He wanted us to
have the museum at all. Within the hour, for the first time in our
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