Let's GoUzorak

What Keeps Us Going

By S. George Thomas

As a child, Agnes was fascinated with learning about the lives of missionaries, and by the time she was 12, she knew God was calling her to go share the love of Christ with people in other countries. At 18, Agnes left her home in Macedonia to pursue God’s calling as a missionary, and she never saw her family again. For the next 18 years, Agnes worked as a teacher in Calcutta, India. During that time, her name was changed to Mother Teresa, after the patron saint of missionaries.

Although she enjoyed teaching, Teresa was deeply disturbed by all the suffering and poverty she saw. While traveling on a train one day, she felt God leading her to give up her position as a teacher to radically serve Him by devoting her life to working among the poorest of the poor. Although she didn’t have any money, she decided to trust God and start an open-air school for children living in the slums. The first several months were intensely difficult. Without any income, Teresa was forced to beg for food and supplies. She experienced extreme loneliness and doubt. Numerous times she was tempted to give up and go back to the comforts of her old life. Yet she relentlessly trusted God and went on to start the Missionaries of Charity to care for those who were a burden to society and shunned by everyone—the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers and all who felt unwanted and unloved.

When Mother Teresa died at the age of 87, Missionaries of Charity had more than 4,000 members in 123 countries running orphanages, hospitals for AIDS and leprosy patients, soup kitchens and schools while caring for refugees, alcoholics, the poor, blind, disabled, and homeless as well as victims of floods, epidemics, and famine. Teresa was just a short, little, 90-pound woman who was utterly devoted to serving Jesus and abandoned everything to obey His call. She literally lifted people out of the gutters of Calcutta, personally nursed their wounds and held them in her arms as they died. There is no other person who has done more for humanitarian causes in the last century than her. But her chief motivation was never to just do social humanitarian work; her heart was to adore Christ in the smallest and weakest of His children and to lead souls to Him. With her heart of compassion, outstretched hands and Christ-like life, Mother Teresa loved her neighbors and lived out the gospel.

Looking at Mother Teresa’s life, it’s all too easy to idealize her and think of her as some hyper-spiritual “saint.” But the reality is that she was an unremarkable woman, no different from the rest of us. She struggled with the same doubts, fears, inability to see clearly and pain that each of us experience. She didn’t spend her days in meditation, cut off and isolated from the real world. She made a conscious choice to throw her lot in with the poorest of the poor, share their meager diet, wear their rough clothes, wipe their leprous sores and offer them comfort as they died agonizing deaths. In fact, she adamantly refused to allow anyone around her to over-spiritualize her actions or even bring attention to her. She said, “You don’t have to be a saint to do good. You need willing hands, not clean ones.” Teresa referred to herself as nothing more than “a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.”

A man named John Kavanaugh once came to Mother Teresa searching for an answer as to how he should spend the rest of his life. When she asked him what she could do for him, John answered, “Pray that I have clarity.” She replied firmly, “No, I will not do that.” Pressing her, John said, “But you always seem to have the kind of clarity I’m searching for.” Laughing, Mother Teresa looked at John and responded, “We cling to clarity, but clarity is the thing we must let go of. I have never had clarity; I have always had trust. So I will pray that you trust God.”

As Christ’s body on earth, we are compelled to reach out, as He did, to those who are hurting and lost. But the path of obeying Jesus’ commission to “go into all the world and preach the gospel” isn’t always easy. There are seasons of dryness, uncertainty, pain, fear, and doubt. Even Jesus—the Son of God—wasn’t exempt from experiencing pain, hardship, rejection, and betrayal during His 33 years on earth. In Gethsemane, Jesus desperately pled with the Father to escape His impending torture and death. Yet in the end, Jesus left the decision in God’s hands and simply trusted. He endured the pain of the Cross so that those of us who were lost in darkness would be reconciled to the Father. And God took the worst imaginable thing that could ever happen—the torture and death of His innocent Son—and turned it into the ultimate triumph over sin and death.

When you answer God’s call to go, there are times when things don’t make sense, times when God calls you to do things you really don’t want to do. But even when the picture isn’t clear, when the path ahead is murky, God is always in control, working His will in us and through us. He never promised us that we would always understand His ways, but He does promise to always be with us. Before going to the cross, Jesus delivered this sobering statement to His disciples: “In this world, you will have trouble.” But the good news is He didn’t end there. He went on to say, “But take heart! I have overcome the world!”

Once we have chosen to obey Jesus’ commission to go, what keeps us going is trust—an uncompromising trust in the love of God. It all comes down to trust. We won’t always understand the big picture. We may not always see the fruits of our labor. We may agonize over all the suffering in the world. But Jesus’ words resound: Take hope! I have overcome the world! Being a believer means that even when you can’t see, you still trust God … no matter what happens. Do you trust that God is good? Do you trust that He is in control? Trust Him today and know that He is working everything together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.

Memory Verse

This is how we know what real love is: Jesus gave his life for us. So we should give our lives for our brothers and sisters. Suppose someone has enough to live and sees a brother or sister in need, but does not help. Then God's love is not living in that person. My children, we should love people not only with words and talk, but by our actions and true caring. 1 John 3:16–18