God is always ready to bring about good. This doesn’t mean that the world is perfect, or that God always comes crashing in to undo our bad choices or bad luck. There is always goodness waiting to bubble up, even when the world is dark.

If you have a driven personality like mine, maybe you’ve been looking for the good that you can do, ready to be part of the goodness God wants for us. Some of you might have a clear path to helping us out of this crisis: you work in health care, or food distribution, or caregiving, or garbage collection, or some other essential service we need during our coronavirus shutdown. We are grateful for you.

And the rest of us, whose path to service isn’t as clear? Maybe you’ve been tempted to force it, to try to do all the things at once. Maybe you’re trying to fit yourself into someone’s vision of a hero, instead of finding blessedness in stillness, and using that stillness to discern how you are meant to be good.

We can be ready for goodness without exhausting ourselves fruitlessly in the search for our sacrifice. This crisis will ask something of all us, and most of us are ready to give. The time when your specific skills are needed will come. Do what you need to do to be ready: grow in expertise, pray for patience, take care of yourself. Even the wise virgins took a little nap while they were waiting – and I bet they were able to enjoy the feast because they had gotten a good night’s sleep the night before.