Mother Teresa

Excerpt from Driving Into The Dawn, page 75

Intransigence, based as it is in our evolutionary nature, is found in all of us. We might blame the devil for it. We might say that we “can’t help it,” when we really don’twant to “help it.” Or we might compromise our walk with the Lord by forcing it to fit our own predetermined, selfish path.

Mother Teresa—a 20th century Catholic nun from Albania who founded Missionaries of Christ in Calcutta, India, and became a humble witness for Christianity to the world.

So, if the evolutionary nature is this inflexible, how do we draw closer to God? We step back for a moment from self, from our willful desires. The presence of Christ’s spirit in our hearts makes it possible for us to do that, to separate who we are in Christ from the natural man tendencies that would impose upon us.

And my experience is that stepping back from our unyielding nature, pushing back even a smidgeon from some inflexibility, opens us to the Saviour’s love. Then his inward flood of light and warmth melts away our resistance and moves our hearts to change.

Such yielding is what I think Mother Teresa is describing when she says that we are each “a small instrument” for our Lord. Comparing our lives to the “inner workings” of “electrical things,” she then says:

Until the current passes through them there will be no light. That wire is you and me. The current is God.

We have the power to let the current pass through us, use us, produce the light of the world. Or we can refuse to be used and allow darkness to spread. (No Greater Love. Becky Benenate and Joseph Durepos, Eds. 67-68)