Today was another hot (stay indoors) day, and sitting in my front room, I picked up some of the books there and read. I guess I’d forgotten why I put these particular books on the coffee table there, but they are good reads, perhaps especially the words I read today:
“We easily get taken in by the sensational, and we wait for sensational events to strengthen our faith. But the sensational only reaches our senses. There are deeper levels where the senses cannot reach, and this is where faith is rooted. At this level, wonders happen all the time, but they aren’t visible or unusual.
In fact, everything in creation is
wonderful, the ordinary as well as the unexplainable. Saint Augustine tells us that the feeding of
the five thousand wasn’t more wonderful than what happens every day in each
seed, just a little more unusual. But, he adds, God does unusual things from
time to time to wake up those who sleep.
A dead person has been raised, and we all wonder about it. So very many are born every day, and no one
finds that unusual. When we reflect more
closely on it, we realize that it is a greater wonder that someone --- who was
not --- is, than that someone who was, is raised.”
This
is the Day the Lord Has Made, by Wilfred Stinissen
“We must proclaim Christ by the way
we talk, by the way we walk, by the way we laugh, by our life, so that everyone
will know that we belong to Him. Proclaiming
is not preaching; it is being."
Love: A Fruit Always in Season, by
Mother Teresa
And then I re-read a letter which sat on my coffee table. It was from the founder of an orphanage in the Philippines, and a man I consider a friend. He sent me a letter from one of his former orphans there. This former terribly abused child recently graduated from college (cum laude) and wanted to thank all who made it possible. It was very moving, but I especially liked the quotes the founder included at the end of his letter:
What we have done for ourselves
alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is
immortal.
---
Albert Pike
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. --- Ralph Waldo Emerson
