{"id":18689,"date":"2017-07-31T01:01:50","date_gmt":"2017-07-31T06:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/?p=18689"},"modified":"2017-07-30T12:20:20","modified_gmt":"2017-07-30T17:20:20","slug":"i-had-a-hard-day-what-do-i-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/2017\/07\/31\/i-had-a-hard-day-what-do-i-do\/","title":{"rendered":"I Had a Hard Day, What Do I Do?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_101850\" style=\"width: 493px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-101850\" class=\"wp-image-101850\" src=\"https:\/\/img.cancaonova.com\/cnimages\/canais\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2007\/02\/formacao_tive-um-dia-dificil.-o-que-fazer-1600x1200.jpg\" alt=\"Photo: Daniel Mafra \/ cancaonova.com\" width=\"483\" height=\"362\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-101850\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo: Daniel Mafra \/ cancaonova.com<\/p><\/div>\n<h2><span class=\"notranslate\">It is important to understand what to do after a difficult day.<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span class=\"notranslate\">The Word of God teaches us:\u00a0<i>&#8220;<\/i>\u00a0In my spirit faints within me, my heart is consumed.<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\">Tell me the road that I must follow, for to you I lift my soul.<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\">Teach me to do your will, for you are my God.<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\">May your good spirit guide me on a flat road &#8220;(Psalm 143,4,8b.10).<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"notranslate\">He knows those days when we think in our hearts: My God!<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\">Why did I get out of bed today?<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\">I should have stayed home sleeping!<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\">Well, those complicated days indeed do exist and happen even if we do not want them.<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\">Days when everything seems to run against us, where we spend the hours crossing people who are more distracting helping, so that everything gets under our skin and anything, no matter how small, is cause for irritation and whining.<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\">Hence the question: what do I do on a day like this?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"notranslate\">As we read Psalm 143, we realize that the psalmist also had his moment of wanting to &#8220;lie in bed&#8221; and forget that such a day had existed.<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\">But what did he do?<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\">Murmured?<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\">Did you become a victim?<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\">Put the blame on everyone?<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\">The answer is &#8220;no&#8221;.<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\">At the very moment when he could no longer bear it, when his heart was consumed and his spirit faint, he prayed to God and asked that the divine will be fulfilled in his life.<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\">Instead of blaming &#8220;government,&#8221; the people around him, and the &#8220;system,&#8221; he begged the Lord to show him the way to go.<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\">He asked the Lord to be his teacher and, like an applied student, wished to learn to fulfill the divine will.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"notranslate\">At this difficult time the psalmist goes on, he does not complain, but wants to learn to extract the sovereign will of God from the troubled environment, like a gold digger who finds grams of gold in the midst of tons of earth.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"notranslate\">However, discovering and fulfilling the divine will, just at that moment when our desire drives us to want to &#8220;squeeze&#8221; someone, is not as simple as it seems.<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\">But I believe that the Holy Spirit can and wants to do a new work in our heart.<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\">It is up to you and me to ask the Divine Spirit to educate us in the concrete situations of each day, whether it is difficult or not.<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\">Let us ask Him to lead us always to discern the will of God in every moment, person or situation with which we face.<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\">Believe: God will do His part.<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\">He always does it.<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\">Then we will reap beautiful fruits of conversion and holiness.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"notranslate\">I repeat: it is not as simple as it seems, but it is, without a doubt, something wonderful.<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\">I shared with you, in this article, something that God taught me to read this psalm before the tabernacle.<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\">And why was I standing before the tabernacle reading Psalm 143?<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\">Because, just like you and the psalmist, I also have my difficult days.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"notranslate\">Let&#8217;s pray?<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span class=\"notranslate\"><i>&#8220;Reinflame our hearts, Lord Jesus!<\/i><\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\"><i>Give us a heart tender and attentive to Thy holy will.<\/i><\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\"><i>May we learn by listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit, to find the peace that comes from the certainty of being in communion with God&#8217;s desire, even in the midst of the most complicated and distressing situations that we can face day by day.<\/i><\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\"><i>Teach me to complain less and to listen more to Your voice, to learn, more and more, to grow more and more and serve more and more for love.<\/i><\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"notranslate\"><i>Amen.&#8221;<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"notranslate\">A hug and my prayers for you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"notranslate\"><em>Alexandre Oliveira<\/em><\/span>\u00a0<em><br \/>\n<\/em><span class=\"notranslate\"><em>Missionary of the Can\u00e7\u00e3o Nova Community<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/formacao.cancaonova.com\/espiritualidade\/aprenda-a-lidar-com-as-situacoes-dificeis-da-vida-e-supera-las\/\">Portuguese version<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is important to understand what to do after a difficult day. The Word of God teaches us:\u00a0&#8220;\u00a0In my spirit faints within me, my heart is consumed.\u00a0Tell me the road that I must follow, for to you I lift my&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[102899,20988],"tags":[102899,5011,16034,141713,221,22834],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18689"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18689"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18690,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18689\/revisions\/18690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}