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FOR<\/strong> over three years, my wife and I have been trying to sell our farm. We’ve felt this “call” that we should move here, or move there. We’ve prayed about it and surmised that we had many valid reasons and even felt a certain “peace” about it.\u00a0But still, we\u2019ve never found a buyer (actually the buyers that have come along have been inexplicably blocked time and again) and the door of opportunity has repeatedly closed. At first, we were tempted to say, “God, why aren’t you blessing this?” But recently, we’ve realized that we’ve been asking the wrong question. It shouldn’t be, “God, please bless our discernment,” but rather, “God, what is Your will?” And then, we need to pray, listen, and above all, wait for both\u00a0<\/em>clarity and peace. We haven’t waited for both.\u00a0And as my spiritual director has told me many times over the years, “If you don’t know what to do, don’t do anything.” \u00a0<\/p>\n Pride\u00a0<\/strong>is a subtle and dangerous mist that silently seeps into the presumptuous soul. It readily creates illusions about oneself and what is reality. For the striving Christian, there is a peril that we can begin to assume that God will prosper all our endeavors; that He is the author of all<\/em> our seemingly good thoughts and inspirations. But when we presume in this way, it is so easy to get ahead of God and suddenly find that we are not only down the wrong path, but at a dead-end. Or, we might be hearing the Lord correctly, but our impatience blocks out that Still Small Voice that whispers: “Yes, My child\u2014but not yet.”<\/em><\/p>\n The consequences of getting ahead of God were disastrous for the Israelites, as we see in today’s first Mass reading (liturgical texts\u00a0here<\/em><\/a>). Thinking that because they had the Ark of the Covenant, they could When it finally came back into their possession, the prophet Samuel called the people to repent\u00a0of their idolatry and ambitions and to pray. When the Philistines threatened them again, instead of presuming that because they had the Ark they would win, they pleaded with Samuel:<\/p>\n Do not stop crying out to the Lord our God for us, to save us from the hand of the Philistines. (1 Sam 7:8)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n This time, God defeated the Philistines His<\/em> way, in His<\/em> time. Samuel named the spot Ebenezer, which means “stone of the Helper”, because “As far as this place the Lord has been our help.\u201d\u00a0<\/em>[1]<\/sup><\/a>1 Samuel 7:12<\/span><\/span>![](\"https:\/\/www.markmallett.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/dropoff-681x1024.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
win any war, they took on the Philistine army… and were devastated. They not only lost tens of thousands of men, but the Ark itself.<\/p>\n\n