ESTAR

Yesterday I started my day with asking God what He wanted me to "do" today.  I was telling Him that I was ready to go and accomplish whatever He had ready for me-I mean He did send us all the way over here to Peru!  I was sitting quietly listening and I felt His presence tell me that as Americans, we are often in too much of a hurry to check "things" off our list.  Perhaps we are addicted to our feeling of accomplishments.  

He softly told me He wanted me to "be" today....be gracious, be kind....you fill in the blank.

How often do I work at "being"?...not near as much as I think about "doing."  I know that both are important-which is why "The God of Intimacy and Action" is one of my favorite books.  I then remembered one of my favorite excerpts for Phillip Yancey's, "Reaching for the Invisible God."  Read the excerpt below.

'"I have visited Calcutta, India, a place of poverty, death and irremediable human problems.  There, the nuns trained by mother Teresa serve the poorest, must miserable people on the planet:half-dead bodies picked up from the streets of Calcutta.  The world stands in awe at the sisters' dedication and the results of their ministry, but something about these nuns impresses me even more:their serenity.  If I tackled such a daunting project, i would likely be scurrying about, faxing press releases to donors, begging for more resources, gulping tranquilizers, grasping at ways to cope with my mounting desperation.  Not these nuns.
     Their serenity traces back to what takes place before their day's work begins.  At four o'clock in the morning, long before the sun, the sisters rise, awakened by a bell and the call, "let us bless the Lord."  "Thanks be to God", they reply.  Dressed in spotless white saris, they file into the chapel, where they sit on the floor, Indian-style, and pray and sing together.  On the wall of the plain chapel hangs a crucifix with the words, "I thirst."  Before meeting their first "client", they immerse themselves in worship and in the love of God.
     I sense no panic in the sisters who run the Home for the Dying and Destitute in Calcutta.  I see concern and compassion, yes, but no obsession over what did not get done.  In fact, early on in their work Mother Teresa instituted a rule that her sisters take Thursdays off for prayer and rest.  "The work will always be here but if we do not rest and pray, we will not have the presence to do our work," she explained.  These sisters are not working to complete a caseload sheet for a social service agency.  They are working for God.  They begin their day with him;they end their day with him, back in the chapel for night prayers; and everything in between they present as an offering to God.  God alone determines their worth and measures their success.
    ....I cannot pretend to be as Mother Teresa's nuns.  I admire, even revere them, and pray that someday I will attain something like the holy simplicity they embody.  For now, all i can muster is a daily (and erratic at that) process of "centering" my life on God.  I want my life to be integrated in the one true reality of a God who knows everything about me and desires for me only the good.  I want to view all the distractions of my day from the perspective of eternity.  I want to abandon myself to a God who can elevate me beyond the tyranny of my self.  i will never be free from evil, or from distractions, but I pray that I can be freed from the anxiety and unrest that crowd in with them...transformation comes, in the end, not from an act of the will, but an act of grace.  We can only ask for it and keep asking."  '

God help me to see what is most important.