From the outside or the inside?

I vividly remember the feeling I had in my Catholic primary school when we were learning about Mother Teresa. I wanted to be like her, and I began to think that maybe I would be a nun when I grew up – something I’d never aspired to be before, as we had sisters as the school’s leadership. But there was something special about Mother Teresa. She was living an adventure. She was truly helping people. And maybe it was the first time I had actually learnt that there were poor people in the world. For the first time I realised that I wanted to be someone who helped people, not in a general way, but in a life-consuming self-sacrificial kind of way.

As I became a teenager, I didn’t still want to become a nun (my husband is thankful for that), but the thoughts I’d had about helping people and changing the world had become foundational in my view of life and the many things I wanted to do.

Most people considered then, and do now, that Mother Teresa is a true hero, someone that we look up to and admire. We may see her as someone wonderful, but are we prepared to walk in her shoes?

There’s a book, Something beautiful for God, about Mother Teresa, that I read every now and again. I thought today I’d post here some of the thoughts from it that have inspired me.

Something Beautiful for God, conversations with Malcolm Muggeridge

Malcolm:

Beautiful is almost your favourite word isn’t it? You were saying, when we asked you to do this programme… ‘Well, let’s do something beautiful for God!’ … How can you make other people see this, that it’s not just to pity, it’s not just to meet physical needs, material needs which are desperate and should be met, but that there’s something more that gives it its reality?

Mother Theresa:

In our work we have many people whom we call Co-Workers and I want to give their hands to serve the people and their hearts to love the people. For, unless they come in close contact with them, it is very difficult for them to know who the poor are. That’s why here in Calcutta especially we have many non-Christians and Christians working together at the Home for the Dying and other places. We have groups who are preparing bandages and medicine for the lepers. For example an Australian came some time ago, and he said that he wanted to give a big donation. But after giving the donation, he said, ‘That is something outside of me, but I want to give something of me.’ And now he comes regularly to the Home for the Dying, and he shaves the people and talks to them. He could have spent that time on himself, not just his money. He wanted to give something of himself and he gives it.

Malcolm:

In other words this other part is really in a way a greater gift.

Mother Theresa:

It is the harder part.

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In the famous words of Paul the apostle, “If I give all I have to the poor, but have not love, I am nothing.”

What things do you do or give for others that are outside of yourself, and what things are really giving of yourself?

Is there something you can dream and resolve to do this year that is truly doing something beautiful for God or for others?