Is your God too small?

Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me.”

When I was younger, I was a worrywart. Anxiety over the littlest of things would almost paralyze me. I told myself this was because I just thought of too many possibilities: What if this happened? Or what if that happened instead?

Now that I am older, I am still a worrywart. But bigger things disturb me now, and I have realized that my heart becomes troubled not because I think of too many possibilities. It’s because I think of too few.

My heart is troubled when I make my God too small, when I lose faith in the God Who is bigger than anything I can ever imagine.

As a newly-ordained priest, I served as one of the chaplains in the Philippine General Hospital (PGH). I met so many good people suffering slow agonizing deaths, and all I could do was beg for divine intervention. I had never prayed for miracles as much as my first few months in PGH, and I had never been as disappointed. I guess I was banking on some leftover grace from my recent ordination or even some sort of beginner’s luck, but not once was I able to witness a much-asked-for healing or recovery. And so I stopped praying for miracles. Instead I just asked for the grace that the patient, his or her loved ones, and I might be able to accept whatever was God’s will.

Some would say that this was the wiser thing to pray for. I thought so, too, but I did not see how, for me, God had become smaller. He stopped being the God of grand gestures Who heard His people cry and so sent forth not another prophet but His only Son. He ceased being the God of surprises Who swept a virgin off her feet with news that she would be the mother of the long-awaited Messiah. He was no longer the God of wonder and might Who could snatch victory from defeat and carve out the Resurrection from the Cross. He became the unbending God Who had His set plans, and we just had to bow to them. And my heart was troubled.

In my sixth month as a chaplain in PGH, I somehow found myself praying for another miracle again. But because my God was smaller, I was not asking for an earth-shaking miracle—just one that would last five minutes.

The miracle was for a middle-aged woman who asked me if she could finally be married to her common law husband, the father of her three children. They had always dreamed of receiving the Sacrament of Matrimony, but the social pressure of having an expensive wedding prevented them. Now, in the advanced stages of cancer, lying on what she had accepted was her deathbed, she wanted God’s blessings on the relationship she had poured her life into.

But I was still a new priest then, and I was too concerned with procedures and technicalities — little things really, compared to what was at stake. I waited too long.

On the day I was supposed to solemnize her marriage, she slipped into a coma. I never prayed as hard as I did during my Mass that day. I asked the people in our chapel to pray with me, and we stormed heaven for five minutes of consciousness for the woman who had so desired to be married to the love of her life, five minutes for me to get a “Yes, I do,” from her and her husband, five minutes for her to hear me say, “I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.” As I ended the Mass, I was confident that God would grant me my five-minute miracle. With the chapel choir and a guitarist in tow, with flowers hastily grabbed from the altar, and with a cell. phone camera (what wedding would be complete without pictures?), I went to officiate the grandest wedding I was ever going to celebrate.

We gathered around the bride’s bed, but she never woke up. And one by one, the wedding entourage left. Two hours later, she died, unmarried. And my heart was troubled.

I was asking for something good. And it was not too big a request - just five minutes of consciousness. And it was not for me. Why was it not granted?

Hospital chaplains are expected to console the loved ones of those who have just passed away. But on that day, it was the hospital chaplain who was consoled by a common law husband who had just lost his live-in partner. “It’s OK, Father. I’m sure that God will marry us somehow.”

I almost blurted out, “He can’t. Not anymore. Your wife is dead.” But he looked at me with eyes that had no blame, that harbored no regrets, and that only held out hope. Then I realized that I had made my God too small. For me, He could only work in the ways I mapped out for Him. But for the man consoling me, God was bigger. “Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts higher than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9). He could do things beyond our imagination. Yes, God could still somehow marry them. 

Our hearts are troubled when we make God too small. When we ask for miracles and don’t get them, the disappointment can make us shrink our God. That is when we have to ask for a double portion of faith to see that when God does not give us what we ask for, it is because He has something better planned. What can be better than our grandest plans? If we have to ask, our God is really too small.

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Have faith in God.

Fr. Francis was ordained in 2009 and served in PGH until May 2011. He is now preparing for further studies in Sacred Scripture, studies which will hopefully make his God bigger.