October 29, 2025 // Wednesday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time
Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s First Reading: Romans 8:26-30
Reflect on the Word //
A pink note, folded in half and scrawled upon in my older sister’s handwriting, awaited me on the counter when I came downstairs for breakfast: “There is something bigger and better out there.”
Yet another full-time job I had interviewed for in the months since graduating college had turned me down the night before, and I was growing more and more disconsolate. Why had the Lord given me such big dreams to work in the publishing industry if He hadn’t intended to fulfill them?
Today’s First Reading, read with the decade’s worth of perspective I’ve gained since that moment, makes my breath catch. In one of the Scripture passages I find most consoling in times of frustration or hardship, Saint Paul writes, “We know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). All things. Every last one of them. The events that don’t go according to our plans are not wasted or forgotten by our God. But often it takes time to see the long game the Lord has been playing in our lives.
It wasn’t that God didn’t care about the desires of my heart back then; I realize that now. He simply had other plans to fulfill them—plans that would take ten years, lots of rejected job applications, two graduate degrees in English, and His patient revelation and nurturing of gifts and talents I didn’t know I had at twenty-two, in order to mature. The longing to work with writers and their words that made me want to be a book editor is the same one that, today, helps me guide my high school English students in their pursuit of truth, beauty, and goodness.
Sister, the Lord also has a long term plan for you. And whether we can see the end or not, today let us rest in the certainty that, whatever we’re experiencing, the Lord will use it all for good. And may we also not forget that a life spent with Him in eternity is the biggest and best promise of all.
Relate to the Lord // Make an act of faith with this truth: God is working all things together for your good.
Dr. Sarah Zentner is a bibliophile and “hygge” enthusiast who delights in steaming mugs of tea, freshly baked pastries, the Little Way, and all things true, good, and beautiful. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the Catholic University of America and lives with her toy poodle, JoJo, in Washington, D.C., where she teaches literature at an all-girls Catholic secondary school.
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