standing apart

lord, when i become downtrodden while gazing at the world surrounding me and am dismayed at the suffering--lord, be my light. whisper your words back into to my ears, above the screaming and shouting crying: you command us - you commission us - to spread the good news of christ to every tribe and tongue and nation. you call us to be SET APART, lord - to look RADICALLY DIFFERENT than the world around us: to speak differently, to believe differently, to live differently, to act differently.

when we obey you, lord, we stand apart.

we do not fit in. lord, the best part is that you know we will struggle because of this, and you go before us by sending the holy spirit to fill us in place of the comfort of the world. when we're left out, we want to run back to the world for comfort, but you, god, send the holy spirit to be our comforter! our joy! you truly do provide for your every need. you truly are all wee need because you care for us in ways we do not even know or realize.

as we stand apart from the world, a gap forms, and it breaks our hearts to see those who are perishing, but lord, you tell us that it is as hard as a camel passing through the eye of a needle to enter the kingdom. lord, let us not be dismayed beyond hope with the state of our world. let us not give up but continue to press onward. we must remember that as the gap widens, we are constantly moving closer to you, pressing forward into the great commission and preparing for your coming. we are preparing a place for you once again, lord jesus, our beautiful savior!

let us not be afraid to run confidently in the path of your commands, proclaim your word BOLDLY, and pray humbly, always remembering who we are and whose we are, and therefore, WHY we are.

resolution

"With the help of her spiritual directors, she progressively came to grasp that her painful inner experience was an essential part of living out her mission. It was sharing in the passion of Christ on the cross--with a particular emphasis on the thirst of Jesus as the mystery of His longing for the love and salvation of every human person. Eventually, she recognized her mysterious suffering as an imprint of Christ's passion on her soul. She was living in the mystery of Calvary--the Calvary of Jesus and the Calvary of the poor.
Her living of this inner experience was an integral aspect of her vocation, the most challenging demand of her mission, and the supreme expression of her love for God and for His poor. Beyond providing care for the downtrodden and outcasts of human society, she was willing to embrace their material and spiritual suffering, their state of being 'unwanted, unloved, uncared for,' of having no one.
Although the intense and ongoing spiritual agony could have made her despondent, she instead radiated remarkable joy and love. She was truly a witness to hope, an apostle of love and joy because she had built the edifice in her life on pure faith. She glowed with a kind of 'luminosity,' ... which flowed from her relationship with God."

-Mother Teresa from "Come Be My Light: the Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta"

I pray that I may cling to the promise that, through pain and trials, Christ is imprinting Himself onto my very life, and that my job is to be a witness to the hope that comes through saying "yes" to Him, even at the expense of a painful life.