If Peter had not failed to catch anything during the night’s fishing (cf. Luke 5:5), he would not have caught anything during the day. And if Paul had not suffered physical blindness (cf. Acts 9:8), he would not have been given spiritual sight. And if Stephen had not been slandered as a blasphemer, he would not have seen the heavens opened and have looked on God (cf. Acts 6:15; 7:56).”
St. Mark the Ascetic in The Philokalia, Volume One.
and another thought…
There are moments in life when we have nothing –
nothing to hold on to,
nothing to show for our efforts,
nothing for which to look forward,
nothing to hope in or believe in or trust.
It is in those moments of “nothing”,
when the world has nothing to offer,
that we become open to life beyond this world: something greater than my self, to the possibility that the world or even the entire created universe in and of itself is not sufficient for human aspiration.
We become open to the possibility of God who is not limited to or by the created order. This realization can become for us a time of hope and faith –
that nothing is not all there is.
Fr. Ted Bobosh