I confess I ask myself this question a lot. Every month I live through a week, give or take a day, of feeling wrong. I think many bad thoughts toward people. I don’t want to be bothered by people or for people. I put on my mask of fake happiness because I don’t want people to bother me with their questions because the evil thought in my head is they don’t really want to know what’s wrong with me anyway. I hate the sound of my voice as I tell the charge nurse why I don’t want to do the case she wants me to do. I spend a lot of my free time thinking bad thoughts about myself, I am too whiney, too evil, too antisocial. I also spend a lot of time projecting my thoughts onto other people, convincing myself they don’t like me, they are thinking bad things about me, talking about me behind my back. Oh! And yesterday I compromised what I believe about the Lord when I was at lunch. I was telling one of my coworkers that people who don’t know the Lord are the way they are because they don’t know Him. She said, “don’t make it about a Christian thing because it’s not just that. Some people are just more spiritually evolved than others.” I agreed with her! What is wrong with me?! I feel like what I imagine Peter felt like when he denied the Lord 3 times, insanely sorrowful and repentant. This pattern literally occurs every month. Why bother serving the homeless? Homelessness doesn’t ever go away. Why bother being nice to people? There are so many who won’t ever appreciate it. Why bother doing anything at all?
Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere with 80% of the population living under the poverty line and 54%? Of the people living in abject poverty. Whole families live on $2 a day! I make more money in 1 week than Haitian families make in 1 year! When I think about all the things I buy that I don’t need and then think of people eating cookies made from mud, it breaks my heart. I don’t give nearly as much as I should or could. The short boy says not to feel bad because I will never be able to give enough. His is the logic of a boy and while I agree with him that I won’t ever be able to give enough, I still need to give more, of my money, my time, my heart. The following is an excerpt from a missionary’s newsletter -
Are you willing? I confess I struggle with this everyday. I wake up in the morning and I tell the Lord I am willing to go wherever He wants me to go. I tell Him I am willing to do whatever He wants me to do. And then as the day progresses, I find myself saying no or saying I don’t know if I can do something because my job might not let me or I’ll only do it if the thing He wants me to do meets my requirements. Suddenly I am brought to a place in my mind which reminds me that God is Lord and if He wants me to do something, nothing will get in His way, not work, not the world, not even me. When I base my decisions on what I think the world wants me to do, or what I want to do, I feel like I am willfully defying the Lord.
From yesterday’s “A Slice of Infinity” -
Encore!
Jill CarattiniI have never been so tired as I was when I stepped on that plane; neither
have I been so happy for so many empty seats. I was dreaming of a two
hour nap before I even found my place. Of course, as is usually the case
in situations like these, when one is intent on being anti-social and
insistent on having earned the right to be so, I found myself not only
with a companion, but with an animated, loquacious, first-time traveler.
The young woman beside me had been a child as she watched the events of
September 11th unfold and had determined then never to travel by
airplane–that is, until today, when events reared a need to break her own
rule. She was terrified and excited and inquisitive all at once. She also
noticed things I’m fairly certain I have never noticed in all my years of
travel, commenting with elation, curiosity, or confusion on every single
one of them. By the time we landed, I not only had a new friend, I was
wide awake to the disheartening reality of all I fail to see around me.
I have a few things on my mind, or a couple of things at least. I was reading a friend’s blog and she was talking about the significance of the number 40 in the Bible. The flood lasted 40 days and 40 nights. Jesus was tempted in the wilderness for 40 days. Moses was called by God when he was 40 years old. The children of Israel wandered in the wilderness for 40 years until the generation of complainers died off. Not one of those complainers entered the promised land. I had a realization about how this applies to my own life. I wandered around aimlessly, self-destructing for 42 years until I finally came to the end of myself and cried out to God to have mercy on my soul and save me. While it isn’t exactly 40 years, I did die on that day out in the wilderness and thanks be to God, He allowed me to enter the promised land!
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