Several years ago I was preaching in Calcutta and had the opportunity to visit Mother Theresa’s “ House of the Dying, ” where those near death were cared for by the Sisters of Charity. The short time that I spent there is still embedded in my mind. It had a profound impact on my life.
Another man named John Kavanaugh (the brilliant ethicist) went to work for three months at “the house of the dying” in Calcutta, he was seeking a clear answer as to how best to spend the rest of his life. On the first morning there he met Mother Teresa. She asked, “And what can I do for you?” Kavanaugh asked her to pray for him.
“What do you want me to pray for?” she asked. He voiced the request that he had borne thousands of miles from the United States: “Pray that I have clarity.”
She said firmly, “No, I will not do that.” When he asked her why, she said, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.” When Kavanaugh commented that she always seemed to have the clarity he longed for, she laughed and said, “I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. So I will pray that you trust God.”
Trusting God is the essence of what Solomon penned when he said; “ Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight.”
Could it be that we want clarity so that we will not have to trust in God?
