Mother Teresa And Dying To Find Life

In the not too distant past a young girl named Agnes wanted to know how she might serve God with her life. She knew she would not have peace and joy inside her heart until she understood her purpose.

After working twenty years as a principal in India, she felt there was something else she was meant to do. She decided to offer a hand of love to the most desperate people she could find.

One day she entered a small, dilapidated hut where she found a man with a lamp that was unlit. She asked why he sat in the dark and didn’t light the lamp, and he told her, “Nobody has ever come in here before.” There in that tiny space, Agnes began reaching one person at a time with the love of God.

You might not recognize Agnes by her given name, but you will surely know her as Mother Teresa. Years later the man from the hut would share his gratitude for that evening when she had visited him. He told her, “You lit the light in my life and it is still burning.”

When I was an undergrad, a particular professor lost his wife of many years to cancer. Countless people from the university offered their love and support. When many students and staff members questioned him as to how he would like them to pray he simply offered, “I ask them to pray I finish well.” His was a life that burned bright.

One two thousand years ago a few women arrived at the tomb of Jesus to find it empty. An angel said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” (Luke 24:5). The question is just as relevant today.

Through countless man made religions, empty rituals, self-serving traditions and endless opinions about “good and evil,” people continue to look for the living among the dead. Yet only life can bring forth life, and only that which is eternal can withstand time.

Following the Christ is not about putting on one’s Sunday best, it is about the death of selfishness and self-righteousness. It is about the end of justifying every thought and action and is instead about burying excuses and surrendering to the promise that the light of Christ has pierced the darkness.

It is about spreading that light, seeking to finish well by loving, caring and contributing to the world around you. And it is about the resurrection of Christ in our own lives that we might find all things being made new in him who called himself Life.

As Alistair Begg puts it, “You don’t know who you are until you know God. So as you contemplate Christ and faith, may you find the light of God’s love and grace shining bright in your heart of hearts, and may you find that light of life never stops burning.”