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Clarity or Trust
Tim Savage16Now get to your feet! For I have appeared to you to appoint you as my servant and witness. You are to tell the world what you have seen and what I will show you in the future. 17And I will rescue you from both your own people and the Gentiles. Yes, I am sending you to the Gentiles 18to open their eyes, so they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God. Then they will receive forgiveness for their sins and be given a place among God’s people, who are set apart by faith in me.’ Acts 26
God had a purpose for Saul’s life and in dramatic fashion Saul’s life was changed in an instant. Very few of us have had life transformations as stunning as this, but God has a purpose for each of us. To be struck down, spoken to in a light and rendered blind can be seen as a blessing! At least there was no doubt for the rest of his life as to what his mission was! Paul had clarity.
We get to live in this world with all of it’s confusion and distraction. We must discern God’s plan without the same clarity that Paul was given. I love this story about Mother Theresa.
When the brilliant ethicist John Kavanaugh 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.”
Dear Heavenly Father,
May I let go of clarity and learn to trust You more and more.
In Jesus name,
Amen