Giving God Something to Work With

I read this from my Magnificat the other day as a daily meditation:

You have prayed and have not yet, as you think, had the complete answer. This is usually because you have not given our Lord something he asks for in order to answer you. For example, when he worked miracles he asked for some trifle which one would suppose useless - as, for example, the loaves and fishes for the feeding of the five thousand; and again, for the Mass, he asks the offering of the simple substance of bread and wine for the miracle of the Consecration. You say, "he hasn't worked the miracle," "he hasn't given me the courage I need." Well, the answer usually is: "you have not given him anything to work the miracle with."

-Caryll Houselander (Magnificat 8/23/12 Meditation of the day) 

Very interesting. I guess I never really realized why it is that Jesus uses other things when he does miracles. He used spit and mud to heal the blind man and he turned the water into wine at Cana (he didn't just create the wine out of nothing). If we're asking for something, we need to first give him something to do that request with. The amazing thing is that we can give him something totally unrelated, like our talents, our time, our tithe, our pain and suffering, our wants and desires, and he can make the impossible possible. He can save a child with a heart condition, save a friend's mother who's going through Chemo, or cause someone to ask you a question about faith. We have to give him something to work with. He's not a God that we just demand things from and he does them, he has us work with him to accomplish his will. I love the example of us giving wine and bread at Mass and God performing the greatest of miracles - making Jesus truly present in the host. So don't think that the little that you have to offer him is too little. St. Therese of Lisieux became a doctor of the church by writing on this topic. It's the little things we offer every day that can make us great saints.