Words

My words have been spent these long last months in papers and charts and tests and in the trapped places of my mind where I don’t know how to think and process and face the world we live in.
So I am reading and listening to and repeating the words of others, hoping that in small ways I may gain a measure of perspective, of motivation, of passion, of energy, of wisdom, of knowledge, of understanding, of eternal value through the experiences of others.  My life right now is far too full of things that can easily be seen as only temporal—I sit in class, I study, I write papers, I go to work, I see patients, I give out prescriptions, I (occasionally) wash my dishes, I go running.  I am learning why, so often, men and women of God have cried out for Him to “Renew the joy of [their] salvation” and to be freed from the entanglements that keep them from running to toward the one true prize.

There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in – that we do it to God, to Christ, and that’s why we try to do it as beautifully as possible.
Mother Teresa

I do not pray for success, I ask for faithfulness.
Mother Teresa

As judgment is God’s justice confronting moral inequity, so mercy is the goodness of God confronting human suffering and guilt . . . It is human misery and sin that call forth the divine mercy.
A.W. Tozer, in The Knowledge of the Holy

I’m re-reading (for the umpteenth time) the novel Christy, by Catherine Marshall (if all you ever saw was the TV version and you haven’t read the book, then, well, you should just read the book).  I’m finding a lot of wisdom in the struggle written about in that book, even if half of it was a figment of the author’s mind. Words such as this: “’ . . . evil is real—and powerful.  It has to be fought, not explained away, not fled.  And God is against evil all the way.  So each of us have to decide where we stand, how we’re going to live our lives.  We can try to persuade ourselves that evil doesn’t exist; live for ourselves and wink at evil.  We can say that it isn’t so bad after all, maybe even try to call it fun by clothing it in silks and velvets.  We can compromise with it, keep quiet about it and say it’s none of our business.  Or we can work on God’s side, listen for His orders on strategy against the evil, no matter how horrible it is, and know that He can transform it.’”

But there is hope in all our tears.  When the hour of Christ’s triumph arrives, the suffering world will be brought out into the glorious liberty of the sons of God.  For men of the new creation the golden age is not past but future, and when it is ushered in, a wondering universe will see that God has indeed abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence.
A.W. Tozer, in The Knowledge of the Holy

And with that great hope, we persevere.