“Now I am glad: not because you were made sorrowful; but because you were made sorrowful unto penance. For you were made sorrowful according to God, that you might suffer damage by us in nothing. For the sorrow that is according to God worketh penance, steadfast unto salvation; but the sorrow of the world worketh death. For behold the selfsame thing, that you were made sorrowful according to God, how great carefulness it worketh in you; yea defence, yea zeal, yea revenge: in all things you have shewed yourselves to be undefiled in the matter.”—2 Corinthians 7: 9-11
_____
“Why are you sorry?” my father asked. “Your reason matters. Are you sorry for what you did, or sorry you got caught? Do you believe you were wrong, or are you accepting another’s projected guilt? If it is the last, you shouldn’t be sorry at all.”
My father paused, finishing thought—what he wished to say—before it spoke, “Listen to your heart and listen to God. Let the rest of the voices make their noise and pass.”
I was but a boy, but growing; and it was a beginning conversation to my father speaking to me as a man, or in expectation that, soon, I should become one.
I looked to my father absorbing message of his words and reflected too on a way I raised him, and his convictions, above others.
Did he regard his own words the same?
Of his message, I asked, “Even you?”
My father’s stern eyes softened into openness and vulnerability.
“Even me,” he answered. “I am as human as the next. God,” he spoke, “always God first; and, no matter what comes, all will be alright.”
And so it is, still, whenever I check my heart. What do I feel? Why do I feel it? By affection, what does God seek to show? Reason matters, and the world is full of noise.