Sometimes I’ll ask people, “If you were the Devil, looking at you right now, how would you attack”? Their responses are invariably perceptive, profound, and relevant. And their responses also share a common theme: The Devil loves to work through distrust of God, and through distrust’s spiritual offspring, discouragement.

Indeed, distrust of God and discouragement seem to be Satan’s favorite weapons. He induces us to take our eyes off the Lord, and to hyper-focus on something else: our own weakness; the reality of evil, both in ourselves and in the world; the apparent absence of God. The Evil One encourages spiritual tunnel vision; he discourages any sort of spiritual zooming out.

Because when we do zoom out, we begin to notice something remarkable: The Lord is with us, always at work (John 5:17). There’s an eloquent little story to this effect in chapter six of the Second Book of Kings. The king of Syria pursues the prophet Elisha to the city of Dothan and surrounds the city. When Elisha’s servant observes the mighty force, he bows to discouragement. But Elisha simply prays: “O Lord, I beg you, open his eyes that he may see.” The Lord opens the servant’s eyes, and he sees “the mountain…full of horses and chariots of fire around Elisha.” And God delivers them from destruction.

Perhaps in prayer, in the Lord’s presence, we could ask ourselves that initial question: “If I were the Devil, looking at myself right now, where would I attack?” In other words, where am I most prone to distrust of God right now? Where am I most susceptible to discouragement? And what would it be like to allow the Lord to open my eyes, to zoom out and to see what Elisha’s servant saw: that the Lord, in all his gentle power, is present and active, and that everything is safe in his hands (John 10:28-29)?

God bless you,

Fr. John Pietropaoli