Witnesses to Hope

To the eye that sees, littlness reveals infitnitely more than vastness.  God is known more truly by a little finite creature through the contemplation of a snowdrop than through the contemplation of the universe.  Very soon the intellect staggers before immensity, it is used up exhausted, only the rare heart responds to it all.  but the inward eye fills with light when it contemplates a little thing, the heart can fold upon it, and so the heart expands and the mind does not wither, but puts out petal upon lovely petal of thought. . . .

From the universe we learn that God is infinite, that we cannot compass him at all.  From such things as insects, flies, little frogs, mice and flowers we learn that to us he is something else.  He is Father, brother, child and friend!

If you ever had a little green tree frog and watched him puffing…

We run two small homes for older adults who are no longer capable of living alone and who have limited support and no resources.  We are only able to house 6-7 residents at one time.  There are many more elderly who could use our help.  We also do foster care for children in need.  We have cared for 26 children since we began this endeavor in 1992.  But there are millions of children around the world who are in great need.

“People say, ‘What is the sense of our small effort?’  They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time.'” (Servant of God Dorothy Day)

“The whole work is only a drop in the ocean.  But if we don’t put the drop in, the ocean would be one drop less.” (Bl Teresa of Calcutta)

So we just lay our bricks, take…

A story we can all learn from from the then Cardinal Ratzinger:

The British doctor Sheila Cassidy (who in 1978 entered the Benedictine order) was imprisoned and tortured in Chile in 1975 for having given medical treatment to a revolutionary.  Shortly after being tortured she was transferred to another cell, where she found a tattered  Bible.  She opened it, and the first thing she saw was a picture of a man prostrate under lightning, thunder and hail. Immediately she identified herself with this man, saw herself in him.  Then she looked further and saw in the upper part of the picture a mighty hand, the hand of God, and the text from the eighth chapter of the Letter to the Romans, a text that comes straight from the center of Resurrection-faith: “Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ” (8:39).  And whereas at first it was the bottom half…

“Cresting a long hill we stopped a moment while Fry blew and stooped and clipped at the snow as though for browse.  I let go of Davy to sit straight.  I can’t describe what we saw.  Here was the whole dizzying sky bowled up over us.  We were inside the sky.  It didn’t make the stars any closer, only clearer.  They burned yellow and white, and some of them changed to blue or a cold green or orange–Sweede should’ve been there, she’d have had the words.  She’d have known that orange to be volcanic or forgestruck or a pinprick between our blackened world and one the color of sunsets.  I thought of God making it all, picking up handfuls of whatever material, iron and other stuff, rolling it in His fingers like nubby wheat.  The picture I had was of God taking these rough pellets by the handful and casting…

I am reading a new biography of J. Hudson Taylor, It is not Death to Die.  Taylor was a missionary to China in the early 20th century.  In my estimation, he was one of the greatest Protestant missionaries to have ever lived, and, along with Amy Carmichael, has had a profound effect on my life.  I always recommend reading his life.  Yesterday as some of our Sisters were sharing about the stresses they’re encountering in life, I could not help but remember this quote from Taylor and would like to pass it along to the rest of you as well:

It does not matter, really, how great the pressure is.  It only matters where the pressure lies.  See that it never comes between you and the Lord–then, the greater the pressure, the more it presses you to His breast.

May whatever is pressing in on you this day…