How We Find Out

 

By their fruits, you will know them Matt. 7:20

We find out what people are really like by the way they take the things that happen to them. One might think a woman very charming, yet find her fail in the day of trouble, or one might be with a man when a fire broke out at a theatre, and find that he was immediately in a panic; or one might see someone, whom one had always regarded as very commonplace, do a very beautiful act. In each case, one would say, 'Well, I never thought he or she was like that! The circumstances of life reveal character.

Our Lord willed to come into this world and bring with Him nothing, to start with the poorest and to meet life as it came, and each thing as he met it revealed His character. Hate came to him, and He revealed His love. Success came to Him, and he revealed His humility. Failure came and revealed his faith. All things came to Him, eventually death, and death itself contributed to his royalty, for it revealed that He is alive forevermore.

Life finds us out, and our first discovery may be very like the discovery of St. Peter when he went out and wept bitterly after denying his Lord. But that was not the last word about Simon Peter, nor need our failures ever be the last word about ourselves. We can learn by our mistakes, and, if life finds us out, we can find out our God in our lives, and through its challenge and His grace bring forth the fruit that shall make us known as His children.

Father Andrew - Meditations, pg. 273