Faith, hope, and success

I found the following in a 100-year-old journal from the Poona and Indian Village Mission, an Asian organization that merged into SIM about 20 years ago. I found it so inspiring that I want to pass it along. (It was that merger that first got us involved in the vast continent of Asia.)

“An Indian Christian [interred in a camp with victims of the plague] said to his wife, ‘Joseph was sold into captivity and cast into prison that he might do permanent good to Israel, and we are sent here to the segregation camp with our sick child, that we might stay here and nurse the plague patients, who need careful nursing.’ The child lived, and scores of other persons lived to thank God for the kind help he sent them through this Christian husband and wife. To know God’s will, to appreciate it, to love it, to do it, is the real source of faith, hope, and success. Not to know it, not to appreciate it, not to love and do it, is the root of unfaith, fatalism, and failure. In order to save the world from this curse, namely, the combined results of unbelief, fatalism, and failure, Jesus asks his followers to pray, “Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven,” since real praying is thinking, wishing, saying, and doing all four blended together into one life, one aim.” The piece is signed Dnyanodaya. I wish I could have known him or her!

Yesterday was so lovely. We got to visit awhile with our former neighbors, and also briefly with some present neighbors. And we spent the rest of the day trimming shrubs and fertilizing flowers and tomatoes. We're both moving quite slowly today, but I think it's wonderful to have been able to do that much work. (Actually, Chuck outpaced me about 4 to 1.) After church today we're going to a city about 90 miles away to a party to honor a relative who just earned his master's degree.

Have a day filled with joy.

Carol