Lent day 29

Last week I memorized psalm 27 "The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?" and re-memorized psalm 119: Beth "How can a young man keep his way pure?"

Since it was my spring break, I was working (i.e. laundry, cleaning & organizing room, darning about 15 socks, gardening, and pruning branches...) every day except Saturday, and then had to usher to a concert that night and then get up early in the morning for church, and then rush to usher another concert, visit a friend in the hospital, etc.
At my boarding house the favorite comment on one's busy day is the scriptural reference "no rest for the wicked!"

March 21 was the 5th Sunday of Lent... and apparently the biggest healthcare bill in American history just passed...I found out about this on Monday and was plunged into temporary darkness and despair... but I do not think discernment is enough to allow oneself the temptation to fear, despair, or anger. Discernment, like good looks and smarts and a nice family are not what G-d demands of us, but what He gave us. So how can I respond? what do I say? That I am nothing. I have nothing. I have no right to despair or fear or hate, but have every cause to pursue righteousness... If this world is rotting, Christ says it is because the salt has lost its flavor.
My greatest temptation in the past 5 years has been to think that my mind is my own. It is not; yet this is a great struggle and temptation for me. If I cannot save the world through great power now, then I must save the world by my weakness...by overcoming the little temptations and hardships that threaten to undo me. I have been reading Brother Lawrence and now St. Therese of Liseux and have been listening to pastor Wurmbrand and Corrie ten Boom...they are all saints of greatness because of their smallness, not just Therese and Brother Lawrence, but also Corrie and Richard, not because they saved 800 Jews or smuggled Bibles or saved 1000 souls, or survived Nazi concentration camps or 14 years of communist prison and torture, but because through their weakness and offering to G-d through "the little way" they have overcome the world.
Greatness and smallness, power and weakness, riches and poverty, are nothing in this present world...they belong to the eternal world. Therefore we will not fear or be discouraged--take heart! Christ has overcome the world. Amen.