The Scriptures are often fulfilled in our lives, but occasionally that involves a little suffering on our part.

For example, our parish has a very temperamental fire alarm with a mind of its own. The alarm has gone off in the middle of the night on several occasions, waking up the rectory and several nocturnal adorers in our chapel. On the positive side, I am now chummy with the graveyard shift of the Bethel Park Police Department, and the fire chief and I are on a first-name basis. Not exactly how I wanted to make friends, but you take what you can get, I suppose.

My seminarian, however, found the alarm amusing. “It’s like Samuel in the Temple,” he said. “ ‘I did not call you, my son. Go back to sleep.’ ” At 2:30 in the morning, I was not really in the mood to quote Scripture, but I was glad that he found delight in misfortune. I think he also enjoyed getting a picture on the fire truck.

After one particular alarm, I was too filled with adrenaline to sleep, but not coherent enough to read or work, so I ventured into Eucharistic adoration. The chapel was almost empty, and it was certainly very quiet, but I had a hard time settling down to pray. I was so distracted, and my prayers were interrupted by an intermittent head bob. On the other hand, I did learn that we have 38 ceiling tiles and that the climate control kicks on every eight minutes and 47 seconds.

The hour passed quickly, but I was angry with myself for my lack of focus. However, not long after this troubled Holy Hour, I read something from Venerable Fulton Sheen that gave me solace. He described one particular day he attempted a Holy Hour: “I sat down at 2 p.m. — to tired to kneel — and went to sleep. I slept perfectly until 3 p.m. I said to the good Lord: ‘Did I make a Holy Hour?’ The answer came back: ‘Yes! That’s the way the apostles made their first one.’ ”

I imagine that many of us have struggled in prayer or even struggled to see God in certain situations. My mother, who was a parish secretary for many years, used to talk about several gloomy priests who always focused on the negative. “When they show up,” my mom said, “even the statues frown.” It is a true gift of the Holy Spirit to be filled with patience to endure the challenges that come with the spiritual life.

Servant of God Luis Martínez once wrote, “There are times we see nothing but defects in our neighbor; everything about him, from head to foot, grates on us. Events produce no other impression but that of despair … if we persevere believing without seeing anything and without feeling anything, this is to live in the obscurity of faith.”

That obscurity of faith plays out like an episode of the “The Joy of Painting,” with Bob Ross: When he begins, you have no idea how the painting is going to turn out, and might even think at several points that he ruined his design. However, in the end an impressive work of art is revealed faster than you can get an Uber Eats delivery.

I am not implying that we can never talk about the negative — after all, some priest gatherings would be very silent without it! I am, however, saying that to focus only on the negative without a lens for the divine prevents us from encountering God’s gift for us in the moment. The more that we can see the hand of God operating in our lives, the more that we reject cynicism, despair, boredom, sloth and, ultimately, spiritual death.

I have gladly moved my Holy Hour slot from the wee hours of the morning, and, thankfully, the alarm has been cooperating with our schedules lately. However, we have to be willing to respond to God’s call with alacrity, no matter what — in the sanctuary, the confessional, on vacation and, yes, even at 2:30 a.m. with a group of first responders and a gleeful seminarian.

FATHER MICHAEL ACKERMAN is the pastor at Resurrection Parish, Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, and chaplain at Seton LaSalle Catholic High School in Pittsburgh.