Elijah is running for his life and God is running with him
all of the way! Elijah’s life belongs to God, as does ours. He came from God
and will be returning to God, as is true for us as well. Not one moment of his life is his, but God’s. Everything about him is God’s, as with
us. Elijah has dedicated himself to God,
giving God the right to himself. God worked miracles through him because of
that dedication and the giving of his right to himself to God. When we allow ourselves to be God’s in the
way Elijah did, giving God the right to ourselves, “He will make a holy
experiment out of you—and His experiments always succeed. The one true mark of
a saint of God is the inner creativity that flows from being totally
surrendered to Jesus Christ. In the life of a saint there is this amazing Well,
which is a continual Source of original life.
The Spirit of God is a Well of water springing up perpetually fresh. A
saint realizes that it is God who engineers his circumstances; consequently
there are no complaints, only unrestrained surrender to Jesus….” (Oswald
Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest,
June 13th).
One of our Sisters died this week. One of the night nurses
who stayed with her most nights for a significant amount of time states that Sister
never complained. Is it possible that she had given the right to herself to the
Lord? What about you and me? Are we
willing to give up this right? Do we trust God that deeply, that lovingly? When I think of us coming to that point in
our spiritual journey, I think of the following persons right off the top of my
head: Mother Frances, the Foundress of
my religious community who is a candidate for sainthood, Mother Teresa, Kateri
Tekawitha, Dorothy Day, my own mother and, in general, parents serving their
spouses and children. That giving of the right to themselves to their families,
I believe, is also a giving of their right to themselves to God. No wonder that
we see saints-in-the-making all around us!
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