What kind of lives shall you and I live? Shall we live only for ourselves?
Or shall we live fruitful, productive lives?
Mother Teresa once made such a choice. And it wasn’t as long ago as you might think. Mother Teresa did not set out to help the poor. For over twenty years she taught the wealthiest children in Calcutta, India. Everyday she overlooked the impoverished slums and the people living in the streets that surrounded the well-to-do neighborhood in which she worked. She was perfectly content with her life. Until one night she was walking home and heard a woman crying out for help. Realizing the seriousness of the woman’s condition, Mother Teresa rushed her to the nearest hospital. At the hospital she was told to sit and wait. She knew the woman would die without immediate medical attention so she took the woman to another hospital. Again medical treatment was denied. The woman belonged to the wrong social caste. In desperation, Mother Teresa took the woman to her home. Later that night, the woman died in the comfort of Mother Teresa’s loving arms.
That night Mother Teresa resolved that this would never happen again to anyone within her reach. She decided that she would devote her life to easing the pain of those who suffered around her. Whether they lived or died, they would do so with dignity. She would personally do everything in her power to see that they would be treated better than they had ever been treated in their entire lives, with the love and respect that all people deserve. (1)
Mother Teresa made a choice. Do you think she ever dreamed that by making that choice her name would one day be a household word? Do you imagine that she even dreamed how many lives she would eventually touch? Obviously not. We never know when we are sowing seed what the result might be.
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1. Anthony Robbins, AWAKEN THE GIANT WITHIN, (New York: Summit Books, 1991), p. 506.