The Will of God

This is a quote from Father Walter Ciszek from his book He Leadeth Me about the 20 or so years he spent in fairly atrocious conditions in Soviet prisons during and after WWII.
It speaks for itself but has been poignant for my life lately in God trying to get me away from my self-pity and self-focus due to my lack of having anything "productive" to do or how much I am physically suffering because of the heat, pollution and chaos of this place. Enjoy.

"...our sole purpose...was to do the will of God. Not the will of God as we might wish it, or as we might have envisioned it, or as we thought in our poor human wisdom it ought to be. But rather the will of God as God envisioned it and revealed it to us each day in the created situations with which he presented us. His will for us was the twenty-four hours of each day: the people, the places, the circumstances he set before us in that time. Those were the things God knew were important to him and to us at that moment, and those were the things upon which he wanted us to act, not out of any abstract principle or out of any subjective desire to "do the will of God". No, these things, the 24 hours of this day, were his will; we had to learn to recognize his will in the reality of the situation and to act accordingly. We had to learn to look at our daily lives, at everything that crossed our path each day, with the eyes of God; learning to see his estimate of things, places and above all people, recognizing that he had a goal and a purpose in bringing us into contact with these things and these people, and striving always to do that will--his will--every hour of every day in the situations in which he had placed us. For to what other purpose had we been created? For what other reason had he so arranged it that we should be here, now, this hour, among these people? To what other end had he ordained our being here, if not to see his will in these situations and to strive to do always what he wanted, the way he wanted it, as he would have done it, for his sake, that he might have the fruit and the glory?

Our dilemma...came from our frustration at not being able to do what we thought the will of God ought to be in this situation, at our inability to work as we thought God would surely want us to work, instead of accepting the situation itself as his will...we came to expect God to accept our understanding of what his will ought to be and to help us fulfill that, instead of learning to see and accept his will in the real situations in which he places us daily. The simple soul who each day makes a morning offering of all the prayers, works, joys and sufferings of this day--and who then acts upon it and accepts unquestioningly and responding lovingly to all the situations of the day as truly sent by God--has perceived with an almost childlike faith the profound truth about the will of God. To predict what God's will is going to be, to rationalize about what his will must be, is at once a work of human folly and yet the subtlest of all temptations. The plain and simple truth is that his will is what he actually wills to send us each day, in the way of circumstances, places, people and problems. The trick is to learn to see that---not just in theory, or not just occasionally in a flash insight granted by God's grace, but every day. Each of us has no need to wonder about what God's will must be for us; his will for us is clearly revealed in every situation of every day, if only we could learn to view all things as he sees them and sends them to us....The challenge lies in learning to accept this truth and act upon it, every moment of every day. The trouble is that like all great truths it seems too simple...and yet to grasp this divine truth, simple as it sounds, and work at it, to face each moment of every day in the light of its inspiration, to attempt insofar as we can to recall it in every situation and circumstance of our daily lives, to labor day in and day out to make it the sole principle by which our every action is guided and toward which we aim, is to come to know at last true joy and peace of heart, secure in the knowledge of attempting always and in everything to do God's will, the only purpose ultimately for which we exist, the end for which alone we were created. There is no greater security a man could ask, no greater serenity a man can know. "