If You Think This Year Was Supposed to Be Different

We might have had different plans for this year, but were they
really supposed to happen? We all wonder whether we’re actually
following God’s will for us, but the reality is that, unless we are
directly going against the Lord in some way, we are doing his will
by just living our life. Wherever this year has taken us, whatever
it has us doing, is exactly where God wants us to be. This is one
of the joys of being a faithful Christian: as long as we are
following the laws of the Lord, we can never be outside his will.
This is true even today, as everything we thought we knew about
this year was turned on its head. We may have had radically
different plans and expectations for where we’d be now, or what
we’d be doing, but it wasn’t the will of God. God has us exactly
where he wants us, and as long as we remain faithful to him, we’ll
follow the path that he’s paved for our lives. So, what if we’re
not following the Lord? This is what the call of repentance is all
about: if we’re not following the Lord, then we get to change the
course of our lives and turn toward him through confession and
penance. And you know when a perfect time for this is? Christmas!
Because of Christmas, our lives don’t have to be a lost cause, or a
dead end. Because God gave his only begotten son to us, we can turn
our lives around and aim them at the light of Christ. It’s through
the incarnation that eternal life with God became a possibility,
and that repentance was born. Because Christ came to earth, we can
use our lives to follow the will of God, even after steering off
course. We now have a future, through the power of our Father’s
love.