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©iStockphoto.com/Klaas Lingbeek-van Kranen
I once saw a film of Mother Teresa
treating the poor in Calcutta, forcing them to eat some sort of
gruel, holding their heads in her lap as they died, making their
last moments on earth full of love. It was not pretty. It was not
uplifting. I left the theater with my head in a whirl of conflicting
emotions.
I was depressed at the time, and I
think my primary emotion was one of guilt. I could never walk among
Mother Teresa’s poor, never mind ministering to them. The
enormity of what she was trying to do overwhelmed me. She was dedicating
her life and every scrap of energy she had in service, yet even
she was only able to touch a handful of the people that suffer from
poverty, hunger, and disease in this life.
How could anyone make a difference,
a real and lasting difference? The suffering of so many people in
the world descended on me like a dark mantle.
There was the Middle East with all
its poverty and strife. There were the victims of the Tsunami,
Katrina, and Rita. There was crime with its attendant drug abuse
and mental illness that plagued our own cities.
Enlightenment
Then I began to study the atonement
and the Savior’s life with deeper intent. The Savior’s
ministry was very brief. Though He wore himself out in a ministry
where he healed and taught from dawn until after dark scarcely sleeping,
during his lifetime he could help only a few.
Was his life a failure? No, because
what he was really doing was bringing living water to the thirsty
of the universe. His real mission was to atone for all suffering
and sin for those who would hear of him down through the centuries
and take upon themselves his name.
His brief ministry was only an example
to us of how to serve. He expects us to be his hands now, multiplying
the good he did in his life by the number of believers in his name.
His healing, if we study it, was intense and personal. It was not
a casual thing.
When we meet him, when He stands before
the Father as our advocate, it will be highly personal. He knows
each of us — our suffering, our sins, because he atoned for
them individually. If his name is written on our hearts, if we are
His, he can say, “This one is mine. For my sake, Father, please
forgive him. I have already atoned for his sins.”
The Starting Point
The Savior’s power and Mother
Teresa’s mission are similar, and therefore we can learn from
both of them how to serve. We can make a difference one person
at a time.
Mother Teresa was famous for giving
the person she was talking to at a given moment her full attention.
“I believe,” she said, “in person-to-person
contact. Every person is Christ for me and since there is only
one Jesus,” she reasoned, “the person I am meeting
is the one person in the world at that moment.” She believed
that starting with individuals would add up to a much different
world.
In the 1980’s, the population
of Calcutta was between six and eight million, of which more than
2000,000 lived on the street. Sometimes, Mother Teresa had to
answer the charge that she and the Sisters were responding to
only a tiny fraction of the need. She replied: “I do not
add up, I only subtract from the total number of poor or dying
... “ Her most famous response to the question of her effectiveness
cam in reply to a U.S. senator: “God had not called me to
be successful. God has called me to be faithful.”
Mother Teresa ... and the Sisters
... were not paralyzed by the thought of what they could not do.
In the same way, there is no need to feel overwhelmed by the weight
of the world’s problems. Simply ask yourself, “Is
there one person I can help in some small way today?” (“Mother
Teresa: Responding to Suffering — In and Around Us,”
Caring Mentors #20952, Abbey Press)
“By Their Fruits, Ye
Shall Know Them”
We can bring peace to the world one
heart at a time. That doesn’t seem like much, but the cumulative
efforts of all the Saints in the world can be mighty. Many people
worry about the hatred towards those of our faith in the world today.
A highly respected Catholic columnist Michael Novak wrote the following:
The attacks upon Romney's religion
have been a last straw. They are just not fair. I remember his
father's campaigns and what an upright man he was — and
no one even breathed a word against him because of his religion.
In addition, every one of the Mormons
I have ever worked with, beginning with a great graduate assistant
for one of my classes at Stanford in about 1967, have been the
most well-mannered, inquisitive, competent, kind and thoughtful
people I know. Arch Madsen of Bonneville Broadcasting, with whom
I served on the Board of International Broadcast for many years,
Joe Cannon who was on the AEI Board, Senator Orrin Hatch, and
a long list of others always lifted my spirits.
One of my favorite texts from the
New Testament is, "By their fruits you shall know them."
That verse has taught me to look for persons who actually love
God, not so much by the churches they attend or what they say
they believe, but by how they and their families live their lives.
Over two public generations now, the Romney family has given us
examples of upright, decent, warm lives, given to public commitment
even though they did not have to be.
These days, though, it has become
imperative for some Christians to come out publicly for Mitt,
now that his religion has come under unfair attack. I am no expert
on Mormon theology, but I do profoundly admire the good family
life and good individuals it keeps sending forth into the world.
Those are signs I read clearly. (“Why I Decided to Support
Mitt Romney”, Michael Novak, The Corner, National Review
Online, December 12, 2007.)
Hurricane Rita and Other Disasters
Recently, I was asked to speak to the
Beaumont Texas Stake on the healing power of the atonement when
dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. The city had been square
in the path of Hurricane Rita two years ago, and the women were
having difficult times with depression and other effects of PTSD.
At one point, the public relations
director asked if I would mind speaking to the media. Knowing I
would be right in the center of the Bible Belt, the idea made me
somewhat nervous.
Would I be attacked? I wasn’t
sure I could handle that. But I was reassured by the wife of the
stake president:
Since Hurricane Rita, the Church
has a tremendously good reputation around here because of all
the assistance that was given to everyone. My husband was part
of the first response and was present and effective at all the
meetings they had with FEMA and other agencies that were offering
help. No one helped more than our church, and people know that.
Persecution of members of our faith
will ever be present, because the adversary wants to destroy us.
But by taking upon us the name of Christ, using the enabling power
of the atonement to become more than we could be on our own, we
can change the world one heart at a time on the only level that
matters.
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© 2007
Meridian Magazine.
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