Tiny Fidelity

November has come and gone, 
December's nearly half-way through, 
and still I have not written 
an updated new post for you.
So I will sit in my chair, 
with my warm cup 'o joe
and tell you all 
what I've recently come to know:
Life is so precious, so short, so
beautiful.
Pursue humility, fidelity, and 
simplicity.
Seek not your own glory,
but rather the glory from above.
And most importantly,
surrender your life to a 
work 
   of 
     love.

I choose to always have some sort of devotional book I turn to randomly throughout my day, and the book I have been (re)reading recently is No Greater Love, a collection of Mother Teresa's wise sayings.


I became an admirer of Mother Teresa in high school after seeing a quote of hers on a peer counseling t-shirt at school: "If you judge others, you have no time to love them." 


After looking up more of her famous quotes, I came to believe following Christ is a generous, gentle, and humble enterprise.  Our leadership teams for FCA and First Priority took on another of Mother Teresa's sayings as one of our focuses in serving students: "I pay no attention to numbers; what matters is the people. I rely on one. There is only one: Jesus."


I bought No Greater Love when I was in college and read it prior to my service trip to Ukraine in the summer of 2006.  I loved it then and felt deeply convicted, moved, and challenged by it, but since returning home to the U.S. have simply kept it on my bookshelf.


I pulled it out this past month because I was feeling rather weak and insecure in my faith, and I had gone to a concert where the musician has stated, "God will never call you to something you can do without Him, but He will never call you to something he will not be with you in."  I had remembered from my first read of No Greater Love that Mother Teresa considered herself very small, little, and insignificant - and she believed this is why God used her in such powerful ways, because she was so weak.  It reminds me of the words of Paul: "Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me...For when I am weak, then I am strong."


Mother Teresa spoke so often of love, and her words are so tender.  Her mission was to show people love, and all she speaks of is loving Christ and loving the poor - the poor in love.  I have been most strikingly hit by her comments on fully giving ourselves to doing little things, giving so much of ourselves that we suffer pain.  She claims that all things are little, yet infinite to God.  I have been meditating on this idea and rereading these words of hers:


"Always be faithful in little things, for in them our strength lies. To God nothing is little. He cannot make anything small; they are infinite. Practice fidelity in the least things, not for their own sake, but for the sake of the great thing that is the will of God, and which I respect greatly.

Do not pursue spectacular deeds. We must deliberately renounce all desires to see the fruit of our labor, doing all we can as best we can, leaving the rest in the hands of God. What matters is the gift of your self, the degree of love that you put into each one of your actions.

Do not allow yourselves to be disheartened by any failure as long as you have done your best. Neither glory in your success, but refer all to God in deep thankfulness.

If you are discouraged, it is a sign of pride because it shows you trust in your own powers. Never bother about people's opinions. Be humble and you will never be disturbed. The Lord has willed me where I am. He will offer a solution.


When we handle the sick and the needy we touch the suffering body of Christ and this touch will make us heroic; it will make us forget the repugnance and the natural tendencies in us. We need the eyes of deep faith to see Christ in the broken body and dirty clothes under which the most beautiful one among the sons of men hides. We shall need the hands of Christ to touch these bodies wounded by pain and suffering. Intense love does not measure -- it just gives" (30-31).


I have been most strongly struck by the words I have bolded.  I see that I have been down on myself lately and feeling frustrated or depressed because I am trying to do work from my own power, and I have been failing.  I have been focusing on the spectacular deeds and my inability to carry them out.  I have been forgetting that the life of a Christian is a life of humility that comes through humiliation.  If I serve Christ with all my heart, then nothing is to be wounded except for my pride, which must be not only wounded, but killed.  I feel convicted to stop measuring, and be generous in what I give, faithfully and humbly loving those in need.  


"In the evening we shall be judged by love" (Saint John of the Cross), and it won't be our spectacular deeds, but rather our dependency on Christ and his love that will save us.


So I am attempting to put this into practice, and give love rather than measure it, and gladly accept humiliation and weakness, and turn to Christ in faith and humility rather than to myself in shame and discouragement.


May we all practice this discipline of giving and experience a fulfilling life of love, which is itself joy: abundant with mercy, praise, and thanksgiving.