Sunday, April 09, 2006

Quote of the Moment

One of my favorite mailings is from Voice of the Martyrs, started by Richard Wurmbrand who spent 14 years in Romanian prisons. I recently ran across a scrap of paper I had saved from one of their magazines . My green pen had drawn a square around a couple of paragraphs that must have meant a lot to me a few months ago when I read it. It's something that only a "square peg" would have written:

"No, I will not deny Him. My mind does not know who He is or where He is. When I was strung up by my arms with my toes barely reaching the floor . . ., I had no evidence that He exists. I was inclined to accuse Him as St. Theresa before me dared to accuse Him, 'O Lord, no wonder You have so few friends when You treat them so hard.' But I believe in the incomprehensible and terrible One. I believe that He is love, although at this moment I feel nothing of His love. I have to believe in its expression in a sacrifice 2000 years ago. I will not leave Him, nor deny Him, even if [it seems] He leaves me."

Some people are able to go through hardships gracefully. It never occurs to them to utter the words of St. Theresa -- but I'm not one of them. I have often, often said these same words to God: Why do you treat us so hard? The answer to that question could fill several books on theology and I'm not going to get into it now. Yet, I wonder what it is in us, at least some of us like Wurmbrand, Theresa and me, that goes on believing even when we feel that God is NOT sustaining us, and in fact, He might be the one inflicting the pain on us (which is not true, but the way we feel sometimes). I suspect it is God's Spirit living in us Who keeps that hope up. Without that, where would we be?

The good news is that even if we do deny Him, He remains faithful. He cannot deny Himself. (2 Timothy 2:13)

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