Little things can make an enormous difference. Someone smiling at you at the grocery store when you’re having a hard day. Someone politely letting you into their lane on the highway. Someone saying they’ve missed you.
Mother Teresa had simple advice for people yearning to draw closer to God. She didn’t recommend reading complicated theology books or engaging in heated debates about religion.
She said we show our love for God by doing “something beautiful” for him each day.
Isn’t that how we show our love for friends? We do something beautiful for them by inviting them over for lunch, lending an ear when they’re distressed and giving them flowers on a special day.
Mother Teresa was a Roman Catholic nun, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her ministry to the poorest of the poor. It all began when she retrieved a desperately poor man, who was dying in agony on the streets of Calcutta.
She showed him compassion, fed him and gave him a comfortable bed. Before he died, he said, “I have lived like an animal in the streets, and now I will die like an angel in love and care.”
In her search for God, Mother Teresa followed the road map Jesus presented in Matthew’s Gospel, where he said we find God by caring for strangers, prisoners, sick people and poor people.
A stranger can be the recently hired programmer at work or the new family at church. Prisoners aren’t just those locked up for crimes, but also people symbolically imprisoned because they’re confined to a hospital bed.
Sick people struggle with ailments like cancer and multiple sclerosis, but also mental illness and addictions. The poor are literally the people who go to bed hungry, and also those who are helpless, such as babies in the womb.
We don’t have to visit every person in the hospital or devise elaborate plans to eliminate poverty on a global scale. Instead, we can cheer up one resident in the nursing home, buy lunch for one beggar and help one pregnant woman in need.
Love needn’t be doled out on a grand scale. Remember the last time a child scrawled a simple sketch and handed it proudly to you? Or a friend stopped by with brownies? These are small gestures, but filled with large amounts of love.
When we have extra time on our hands, there’s a temptation to “kill it” by shopping or scrolling through social media. What if we asked ourselves, “Where can I find God today?”
How can I make someone’s life happier today? How can I dry someone’s tears? Help someone who thirsts for understanding?
Is there someone yearning for a kind word? A listening ear? Sometimes we needn’t leave our own houses to find these needy folks.
Believe me, I’m not writing this from a saintly perch, where temptations to shop and scroll never rear their ugly heads. But since our time on earth is limited, “killing” it seems like a dreadful waste of a God-given gift.
Martyrs are willing to die, rather than deny their belief in Christ. We may not be called to this kind of martyrdom, but we might be called to “die to self,” which means slowly chipping away at our selfishness.
We curtail our self-centered impulses when we refuse to indulge in “shopping therapy,” and head to the nursing home, soup kitchen or jail instead. And when we stifle the temptation to snag a luxury item and instead give the money to charity.
The way we spend our time shows what we truly value. The way we treat our neighbors shows the depth of our love for God. Let’s pray for the grace to do something beautiful for God by helping the suffering people of the world.
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