This past summer we experienced an extraordinary heat wave in July. Temperatures where I live reached over 115 degrees. There was no relief. Air conditioning systems could not keep pace. Cool drinks were of little help. A friend's swimming pool was eerily and uncomfortably hot.

We are prepared for mild heat in the summer, with occasional spikes --- not a series of days with historic high temperatures. The extreme heat, in effect, exposed all the weaknesses in our traditional defenses against high temperatures. Our normal tools were inadequate. Our coping mechanisms largely failed.

The same is true in our lives. We tend to prepare ourselves for predictable difficulties and cope according to our past habits. When extreme hardship arises we often find these tools inadequate. Instead of finding relief, we find that the hardship continues. A failed relationship, lost job or ill loved one can through into a state of shock where nothing seems to ease the pain.

In today's first reading, Isaiah prophesies, "Blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD… He is like a tree planted beside the waters that stretches out its roots to the streams, it fears not the heat when it comes; its leaves stay green; in the year of drought it shows no distress, but still bears fruit."

I don't know about you, but I would love to have that kind of faith. I mean, when I experience difficulty, I tend to show a lot of distress. I try anything I can to escape the heat. I don't want to endure it. I want it to go away.

It never occurs to me that I could actually prosper in it. I stop bearing fruit and become focused entirely on myself.

In today's Gospel reading Jesus delivers the Sermon on the Mount, where he declares that the poor, the weeping, the reviled are truly "blessed." I've never been exactly sure what this means. Does it mean that there is something inherently more holy about being destitute? Or is this sermon describing people who have rooted their lives so deeply in the love of God that they are able to prosper in any situation --- in prosperity or poverty, in sadness or joy, whether admired or ridiculed.

I suspect the latter, and today's readings call us to root our lives in God's love in the same way. We might think we need a nice home, cars, bank account and career to be secure in this world. Sadly, these things tend to insulate us from our need for God, and often when we are blessed with prosperity our awareness of our need for God recedes.

When I am poor, I pray for wealth. When I am weeping, I pray for happiness. When I am reviled, I pray for popularity. Today's readings tell us that the answer to the experiences that test our faith is not to have the experience change, but to have our faith grow.

I should pray not for a change of circumstances but for a change of heart, a deepening of faith, and an openness to the possibility that God may be loving me through the searing heat, not in spite of it.

Bill Peatman writes from Napa.