One more before I collect BLC’s Newsletter Mustard Seed from the photocopy centre at Damansara Jaya. Today, the nourishment is suplied by Gordon Cosby:
“During the last ten years, our national economy has been doing well, we are told. Yet more and more people are sliding into poverty’s grip. All those statistics represent human beings who suffer and whose children don’t eat well.
In the face of such desperate need, no matter how I try to love and to care and to give myself with abandon to God and to people, I find that I always have to turn my back on more people than I can help. The more deeply I care, the more painful it is to watch what I cannot do–and what other people can’t or won’t do.
When I’m surrounded with such misery of body and spirit and can respond to only an infinitesimal part of that suffering–that, for me, is discouraging. It destroys my courage.
When reality is infinitely discouraging, how am I supposed to keep hoping? How can I keep up my courage? The only antidote to such discouragement, I believe, is to become rooted in another reality.” ~ That’s just the opening paragraph. For more read here .
Hi Sivin! Do you put up your newsletter online? I would really like to read it. 🙂
Thanks for drawing me back to a fountain that restores my own sense of calling. Small is beautiful and we are in this proces of transformation together for the long haul!!
Love the links and your inspiration.
It’s amazing … but your article is so timely. Especially since I was so discouraged today and simply exhausted from, well, grief. This passage caught me:
… “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice” (Philippians 4:4). This is not just pious stuff. This is the nature of the universe in which we live. The only legitimate way to act when you see it is to rejoice and give thanks.
And so I could give thanks and rejoice in my circumstance, knowing that He is working out His plan in my life and in the lives of people around me.
And in case I forget – have a Good Friday.
Is that what we say to each other on Good friday? 😉