NOT CREATED FOR NAUGHT

Ah ha! Just what I was looking for!

Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-1890)

composed this declaration:

"God has created me to do Him some definite service.

He has committed some work to me

which he has not committed to another.

"I have a mission; I may never know it in this life,

but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain,

a bond of connection between persons;

He has not created me for naught.
 
"I shall do good—I shall do His work.

I shall be an angel of peace while not intending it,

if I do but keep His commandments.

Therefore, I will trust Him."

The above is exactly the statement of affirmation I was trying to make when I wrote the following poem earlier this week. Both Newman's declaration and my poem summarize what I have personally sensed since my childhood—not fully understood, sometimes doubted, often was amazed at, at times dug in my heels against—but always pondered in my knowing spirit as true. 

 

Like the many facets of a diamond, this mission, this destiny, this purpose, this journey God has put me on for eighty decades since my baptism as an infant, has had multiple reflections in its outworking. Step by step it is still being revealed as I keep marveling at how God leads me. In different seasons of my life the Lord has required me to walk diverse and unknown paths, “roads less traveled.” Sometimes my road has become a bridge, sometimes a link in a chain, sometimes a bond of connection, sometimes peacemaking, sometimes a catalyst to enable God's larger purposes to be fulfilled.

My response is less than perfect at times because I “see through a glass darkly” as Saint Paul described it. Most of the time, however, my heart-stance is to say an emphatic “YES, LORD!” It is my personal continuing “fiat”: “Behold, I am the handmaiden of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.

At times I feel as if I am blindfolded or stumbling in the darkness because God has not spread out plainly before me His agenda for my mission. At times I have been afraid that, humanly speaking, everything has gone askew. I ask His forgiveness when I have demanded full light upon my path or been impatient and insisted He tell me the outcome in this life. It's hard to wait “till Later!”

Nevertheless, in the words of an old Christian hymn, “I will trust and obey, for there's no other way.” So I will keep taking only the next step He reveals, doing His work and keeping His commandments. Since God has always proved faithful, “Therefore, I will trust Him.”

RELENTLESS WIND*

Leona Choy

THE WIND has blown through my life

from infancy through all the changing years

propelling me

along the paths of time.

Sometimes gently whispering

Sometimes urgently redirecting me

altering my self-planned course

to thrust me

along new paths of time.

THE WIND blew unrecognized

through my innocent childhood years.

In youth's impetuosity oft withstood

by the stubbornness of my self-will

as I stumbled

along my private paths of time.

In prime and senescent years

THE WIND continues to blow

lovingly, patiently

in spite of my resistant humanity.

RELENTLESS WIND:

Grant me the grace to live

this allotted span of earth-time

given me so munificently

to accomplish some ordained portion

of God's Kingdom destiny

some mission to bring me

ultimately to behold His face

in Eternity and receive His words

“Well done, good and faithful servant!”

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* THE WIND=The Holy Spirit