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| Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with thee. |
This morning when I opened my iPod to look up Morning Prayer, I noticed a short essay in my prayer app on the Annunciation. Specifically it was reflecting on whether Mary could have said no. One paragraph in particular struck me:
"When we come to an important decision in our lives, we can easily find our minds clouded by the possible consequences, or, even more, by partial knowledge of them. How can we ever move, when there is so much good and evil whichever way we go? The Annunciation gives us the answer. God's grace will give us the strength to move, even if the fate of the whole world is hanging in the balance. After all, God does not demand that our decisions should be the correct ones (assuming that there even is such a thing), only that they should be rightly made." [Catholic Calendar app for iPod Touch, March 25, 2014]This makes me think about how, when faced with a decision, especially between two good things, I can pray about it and never really feel like I get an answer from God. Sometimes I just want God to tell me which I should do. But He won't that's not how he works. Reading the paragraph above makes me realize that I don't always need a clear answer. Very little in life is black and white. There are lots of gray areas. As long as I make decisions in the right way, I will benefit. I might be better for those decisions or I might learn from them. I might find peace or I might be led to make a different decision the next time.
In all, the important point is that decisions are "rightly made." We do this through prayer, seeking appropriate counsel, and evaluating the consequences to both ourselves and others who may also be affected by our decisions. If we so all these things, regardless of what the decision is, we can at least know that we made the decision rightly.
I've been second-guessing a decision all week so thank you for posting this. I needed to read it.
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