the Treasure of Human Life, Part 2

I am just the pencil in the hand of God. It is He who writes.Mother Teresa. So now I call on Him to write down exactly the thoughts and feelings--and the lessonthat He has written on my heart today. I am an avid sports fan, as Ray can tell you. It has been a beautiful, sunny, not-too-humid Saturday in the middle of June in Middle Tennessee, which is a rarity. Ray and I went to our friends' shop, as we do most weekends, and I found me an exercise bike that they had just acquired, and they gave me a steal on it. Just by virtue of the weather and the finding of something I had been looking for since I moved here, the day was shaping up to be awesome. But nothing could prepare me for the thought-provoking article I would read in ESPN the Magazine when I got home. It was about a guy who is now a coach with the Kansas City Royals who, in his playing days, was in the Texas Rangers' organization. He was just about to catch his big break in the big leagues when he collided with another man in the field, chasing a ball hit by the opposing team, and he got hurt. He was never the same again. He got demoted back down to the minors, and then he quit. He figured it just wasn't meant to be. But he wasn't bitter, you see, because he had overcome greater adversity than this: He was the third child, the second son in a family of eight kids. When his mom noticed that his older brother, at the age of eleven, started walking on the balls of his feet, she, being a nurse, took him to the doctor, where they did tests and found that he had muscular dystrophy. The doctors told the family that if they had girls, those girls would likely be carriers of the disease, but would not show any symptoms. But the boys wouldn't be so lucky. They would all likely be dead of the disease by the ripe old age of forty. (The words. "Ripe old" were added by me, they did not come from the article.) So the would-be baseball coach's parents had him tested, and amazingly, miraculously, he did not have MD. But he would watch helplessly, along with the rest of his family, as his brothers slowly, and seemingly cruelly, were robbed of their bodily faculties, and died. At one point in the article something to this effect was written: A grateful man is a patient man. This got me to thinking about my own ways in terms of patience and gratitude. I am not a patient woman, yet there are a lot of times I feel grateful for the people and things and opportunities God has placed in my life. But am I truly grateful for them, or am I just grateful for them when they seem to be producing what I would consider fruit? This thought was driven home for me again later tonight as Ray and I watched a movie about Mother Teresa. Here was this saintly woman who took care of the sickly and the poor in the cruelest streets and slums of India, having to work for God under the most meager of conditions. Yet here am I, close to twenty years after her death, able to sit in my nice, air-conditioned home with my best friend, able to watch this movie, with his descriptions, on a TV that most people from India didn't have at the time. And a thought occurs to me now as I write this: Most blind people in India at that time didn't even have a friend to describe such a movie to them even if there were a TV available. And my work? Sitting in my comfortable bedroom with my Android device, which was unheard of back then, and writing to you, my readers. How blessed am I, and how numerous the life treasures that God has given me. So I will close with a prayer. Dear God, please help me to be ever mindful of, and grateful for the things, people and opportunities with which you have provided me. Holy Spirit, overshadow me and remind me when I get impatient that everything good that comes from you is worth waiting for. Help me, when I'm suffering, to remember that even you, my God, suffered on the cross to buy back my soul from the Evil One. Grant me the grace to bear my crosses more patiently and lovingly for your sake. Bless Ray, and all my family and friends, and all who will read this. Speak to them, Holy Spirit, through me, in my words and deeds. I ask this in Jesus' holy name. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.