“God won’t give us more than we can handle,” is a saying I’ve heard often of late.

 

Indeed, God won’t. But the world is quite capable of giving us more than we can deal with on our own, without God’s help. 

 

We can’t know what’s ahead, so it’s a good idea to remind ourselves often that we can cry out to our Trinitarian God and we’ll be heard at a moment’s notice. That’s good because there are plenty of common opportunities for us to experience difficulties and outright disasters.

 

The death of someone important to us can be devastating to our hearts and to life as we know it. An illness — ours or a loved one’s — can be overwhelming emotionally, financially and physically. A change of personnel or policies at work can cause long-term anguish and insecurity, not to mention the impact from the loss of a job.

 

Our inherited makeup can make us prone to illnesses, to mental health challenges, or predisposed to addictions that will tie us up and drag us down before we realize what’s happening. Natural disasters can upend the lives of many all at once.

 

Wars, accidents and violence are present in our fallen world. Satan works hard to encourage carelessness and destructive behavior, and all too often makes what is bad even worse.

 

Yet God is here, ready 24/7 to come to our aid whenever we call. His help can come in many forms, and hopefully we receive that assistance with gratitude. God — being Almighty, all-loving and omnipresent — can assist us in a variety of ways. He is the source of outright miracles and miraculous happenings, of course. But He works too in numerous, more hidden, ways.

 

For example, sometimes God will share with us His perspective of what is happening, which can assure us that He knows what is going on. His view of things also helps us look beyond what is directly before us. We may gain great strength from seeing our dilemma properly — the true who, what, where, when, and maybe even the why. 

 

In the long or short term, God may change our circumstances, or help us make necessary changes. He can be very subtle, though. We might not notice exactly when things start to improve until it dawns on us that they are, in fact, better.

 

If we are a target of serious aggression — deliberate like domestic abuse or impersonal like the wanton destruction of war — our whole sense of wellbeing is threatened. Here, God’s help may be a matter of putting the right people into our lives at the right time to do the right things that will help us.

 

God also may gift us with a reassuring feeling of protection, or He might guide us away from the most dangerous part of whatever disaster is looming, or He can walk right through the muck beside us. 

 

As we’ve seen more than once in the news, God may prevent a symbol of faith from being destroyed in fire or flood — to be found later, providing an awakening of hope in the midst of loss and a sense of being cared for and watched over.

 

Hopefully our families, neighbors, friends and fellow parishioners contribute to that feeling of being cared for, but a lot of their help depends on the situation. If the pain inside us is barely hinted at in our outer appearance, those who care about us may not comprehend our needs. Sometimes misery will impact large populations, and everyone struggles.

 

Finally, there are traumas large and small that can happen to a person, and no one else but God knows about it.

 

Even then, God can throw us a lifeline to help us realize what’s happening and find and accept a process to address the situation. Having God in our corner can give us what we need to beat the odds for making needed changes and keeping things changed.

 

Especially when life gives us a combination of more than one loss or threat at a time, we need our faith and knowledge of God — who is all-loving and greater than disasters.

 

St. Peter gives us a helpful thought to repeat to ourselves before, during and after overwhelming times: “Cast all your cares on Him, because He cares for you.”